Join Red Door’s Executive Creative Director, Lisa Schiavello, & the social summer interns as we begin the conversation about taking Creative Risks.

Want to join us? On Thursday, August 11th from 1 to 2 PM (PST) we’ll be tweeting via #creativechat  & @RedDoor  asking Lisa about some risky business!

Have some questions you want to create buzz about? Send ‘em to our Facebook or Twitter by August 10th!

Want to meet us face to face? Join us for our San Diego Speaker Series on August 24th or our Denver event on September 13th where the lively discussion around Creative Risks will continue!

Let’s chat.

They Did Whaaaaat?

If you weren’t watching your Twitter feed last Friday, or you are not yet following @Reddoor, you may have missed the announcement that the Red Door Interactive interns hijacked the company’s social media outlets! Yep, even this is a hacked blog post self-promoting our intern greatness! We changed the passwords and are dedicated to bringing you some fascinating content in the upcoming weeks.

The initial takeover began with a memo to our fabulous and 100% Jerk Free CEO who took the takeover in good stride, even seeming to relish in his new found Friday freedom.

However, some of the other Red Doorians did not share Reid’s laissez faire attitude. They were somewhat concerned by our actions, threatening to sell us to the highest bidder….

One employee even made fake twitter accounts to try & hack us. Obviously, it didn’t work. Nothing can stop us!

With the social media takeover now in full swing we plan to continue this momentum throughout the summer (or at least until RDI can guess our new passwords!). With all the excitement, be sure to follow the action on Twitter (or #interntakeover) and Facebook. You never know what we’ll be up to next.

By the way, today we took over the LinkedIn & even the @RedDoorJobs feed! We figure HR won’t fire us if we have some bargaining power…

P.S. We still haven’t heard if we’ve received any offers from the Craigslist ad – we want to know!

July 29, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

Click, enjoy and learn.

We’ve done the hard work for you.

Google Launches Hotel Search Tool With Room Price Data - Mashable
“Hotel Finder, an experimental search tool, enables users to define key lodging preferences in hopes of finding the perfect hotel for their travel needs.Users input their preferred location, dates, price and rating details, and Hotel Finder delivers its top recommendations, in a list or on a Google Map. For the moment, it’s only available in the U.S.”
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Spotify Sued for Patent Infringement - Mashable
“The patent in question is for a “Device for the distribution of music information in digital form.” The patent was filed in the ’90s, and was purchased by PacketVideo a few years ago. Now, the company is claiming that Spotify is infringing on the patent, causing “irreparable harm and damage” to its business, according to the suit.”
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Business Guide to Facebook Launches- Search Engine Watch
“Launched Tuesday, Facebook for Business attempts to lay out a clear, concise, and easy-to-follow guide for businesses, making the problem of over-optimizing a thing of the past. The resource center brings value to business owners, employees tasked to handle social media, and marketers looking for science and statistics to sell and educate regarding Facebook services.”
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Five Tips on Marketing to the Millennial Mom - Advertising Age
“Millennial consumers have held marketers rapt since they burst into demographic studies as the influential ‘tween offspring of the earnest and omnipresent boomers in early 2000. The top side of millennials is just hitting 30 years of age, while the mean is about 22. As they are becoming parents themselves, this group constitutes the first generation of moms to enter motherhood replete with perpetual connectivity, myriad online and offline social networks and a yen for the triple bottom line in every purchase.”
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Twitter Intros Ability To Target Promoted Tweets To Followers - Search Engine Land
“Twitter is now allowing brands to target their promoted tweets to followers only. Like other promoted tweets, the messages appear at the top of users’ timelines upon login, and scroll down afterwards. They can also be dismissed immediately.” 
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A comprehensive list of noteworthy news can be found at http://bit.ly/nuUyKP . Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter if you’d like up to the minute updates on our latest posts @reddoor.

July 15th, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

Click, enjoy and learn.

We’ve done the hard work for you.

Custom Landing Pages for Your App - ReadWrite Mobile
“App.net lets you make customizable landing pages for your mobile application. Using simple templates, your landing page can feature a description, a mockup of a mobile phone with a rotating carousel of the app’s screens, links to download the app on various app stores, social sharing buttons and links to your company’s online presence on sites like Facebook and Twitter.”
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Facebook Commerce: A Brief History - Ad Age
“Brands have been hawking product on their Facebook fan pages for no more than two years now and yet the promise of F-commerce has the retail world buzzing. One prediction says social commerce will top $30 billion globally by 2015, with Facebook-generated sales one of the primary drivers.”
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Privacy Options Come to Online Video Ads   - Ad Age
“Beginning this September, online video ad network Tremor Video will feature the privacy icon on virtually all of the ads that appear on its network, mostly 15- and 30-second commercial spots common to TV. Tremor is the largest video ad network, serving more than 700 million ads to more than 20% of the internet audience in May, according to ComScore.”
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5 Chrome Extensions That Improve Google+ - Mashable
“While Google works on adding more features, some available Chrome extensions can fill the functionality gap. Whether you want to get better notifications, enjoy improved sharing options, or scroll through your stream more quickly, there’s an extension available — for free — to help.”
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Twitter gears up auto-ads for big clients - Reuters
“The company will soon provide a so-called application programming interface, or API, that will help advertising agencies and corporations deliver large volumes of ads on Twitter. Access to the API, which Twitter plans to begin in the fourth quarter, will initially be rolled out as a test involving a limited number of partners.” 
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A comprehensive list of noteworthy news can be found at http://bit.ly/nuUyKP . Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter if you’d like up to the minute updates on our latest posts @reddoor.

June 24th, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

Click, enjoy and learn.

We’ve done the hard work for you.

Get Satisfaction Gives Customer Service on Facebook an Upgrade - Mashable  
“Facebook is increasingly becoming a front-facing interaction point for customer service. Users expect to be able to ask questions, send suggestions or get help from a company Facebook page. The problem is, the Facebook Wall was never designed to really manage that type of interaction. Get Satisfaction is addressing that problem by making it possible for administrators and customer service agents to take data from the wall and funnel it into their existing CRM system, be it Salesforce.com, Oracle or even a separate Get Satisfaction community page.”
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AmEx Expands Foursquare Pilot - MediaPost
“American Express members who link their foursquare profiles to their cards can “load” and redeem merchant specials without the need for coupons, special codes, or showing their mobile devices to cashiers. The functionality is powered by the American Express Smart Offer APIs.
The national launch kicks off with Specials from H&M, Sports Authority, and Union Square Hospitality Group, and is expected to expand rapidly to include additional national and local merchant offers in the coming weeks and months.”
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Study: Within Four Years, 70 Percent Of All Mobile Ads Will Be Local  - PaidContent.org
“U.S. mobile ad spend is expected to balloon to $4 billion in 2015, up from just $790 million last year, according to the latest projections by forecaster BIA/Kelsey. One of the key drivers of the growth will be targeted local ads, which will account for $2.8 billion, or 70 percent of total spend, compared to $404 million, or 51 percent, this year.”
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Google Rolls Out Behavioral Targeting - Search Engine Land  
“Google is finally rolling out the ability to target ads to users by interest — based on their previous browsing activity, or behavior — to all of its advertisers. The company first announced a beta test of this capability more than two years ago, back in 2009, and it has slowly been introducing it to larger groups over time. The company says the capabilities are available today. The announcement marks Google’s full entrance into the world of behavioral targeting in AdWords.”
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Twitter Moves Toward Promotional Tweets - AdWeek
“Twitter may be one step closer to introducing advertisements on the main feature of the site, the streaming tweet timeline. The plan to place promotions in the tweet stream has been in the works for more than a year and now it looks as if the idea is gaining traction on the sidelines of the Cannes Lions event.” 
Read More

A comprehensive list of noteworthy news can be found at http://www.delicious.com/reddoorinteractive. Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter if you’d like up to the minute updates on our latest posts http://www.twitter.com/reddoor

June 10th, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

Click, enjoy and learn.

We’ve done the hard work for you.

HOW TO: Start Marketing on SCVNGR - Mashable
“What do Neiman Marcus, HP and Buffalo Wild Wings have in common? Not a lot, except that they’ve all created marketing campaigns on SCVNGR. The breadth of industries above showcases exactly why SCVNGR might be a good tool for your business. Mashable spoke with Chris Mahl, SVP of marketing at SVNGR to find out how businesses can get involved with the platform and start cashing in.” 
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Google Buys PostRank to Boost Social Analytics - Search Engine Watch 
“Last week, Google bought PostRank, a social analytics service that tracks and measures social posts. With this acquisition, Google has gained a resource to better understand the social web, and that resource can be applied to great impact in several of Google’s key social arenas. What Is (or Was) PostRank? PostRank, in their own words, “is the largest aggregator of social engagement data in the industry.” The service allowed users to get real-time data on trending topics, high-volume conversations around the web, and their own posts.”
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Mobile Display Ads More Than Doubled in Last 2 Years - AdWeek
“According to a study from comScore, display advertising on mobile devices has more than doubled over the past two years. The study found that in April 2011, 689 advertisers used mobile display ads to reach consumers on their smartphones—an increase of 128 percent from two years earlier. According to the report, 50 percent of all ads were for mobile content and publishing, while 26 percent of ads were for consumer discretionary goods, 7 percent for information technology companies, and 6 percent for financial services ads.”
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Why Email Marketers Need To Pay Attention to Mobile  - MediaPost
“Ignoring mobile may have real consequences. If your subscribers are mobile-savvy, and your email isn’t optimized for these environments, you run more than just the risk of missing out on communication. By not reaching customers the way they prefer, your emails will go unread, marked as spam and your messages will be ignored – all greatly impacting your reputation and deliverability.”
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Facebook Face-Recognition Tool Under Fire - MediaPost  
“Guess we were wrong to assume that Facebook had grown too powerful for privacy-related criticism. No, the social giant is now being forced to apologize for the way it rolled out its face-recognition system. “A group of privacy watchdogs drawn from the EU’s 27 nations will study the measure for possible rules violations,” Bloomberg reports. “Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people’s prior consent and it can’t be activated by default,” the group tells Bloomberg, before promising to “clarify to Facebook that this can’t happen like this.”
Read More

A comprehensive list of noteworthy news can be found at http://delicous.com/RedDoorInteractive. Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter if you’d like up to the minute updates on our latest posts http://twitter.com/reddoor

Michele Hinojosa, Director of Digital Analytics, Red Door Interactive

Perhaps you’ve been working in digital measurement for a few years, or maybe you’re new. You keep hearing about Twitter and wondering whether you should jump on the bandwagon. Well, you’ve come to the right place.

Why should I join Twitter?

1. To learn: Step outside the sandbox of your own company, your own analytics solution, and your own challenges. Your eyes will be opened and you’ll start thinking about the bigger picture, and bring your what you learn back to your organisation.
2. To engage with others: It’s a fantastic opportunity to meet and build relationships with others in the industry. You can debate, discuss challenges, throw ideas around and form connections that may benefit you in the future.
3. Get help and help others: The web analytics community on Twitter is an amazingly generous group of people. Take @usujason or @VABeachKevin, who respond to fellow analysts’ Omniture questions on a daily basis. Oh – did I mention neither of them even work for Omniture?! Having a problem with Google Analytics? Throw it out. Others may have tackled this already and can give great advice.

Full Story>>>

March 18th, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

Click, enjoy and learn.

We’ve done the hard work for you.

Google Analytics Unveils A New User Experience - Search Engine Land
“Google has just announced a new version of Google Analytics, introducing a completely new user experience. The product got a significant face lift and it now looks more enterprise-like. The last time Google Analytics released such a major version was 1.5 years ago. The release included the intelligence engine, custom variables, expanded goals, expanded mobile reporting and others. The new version of Google Analytics will gradually rollout to users in phases according to Google.”
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Which is Better for Social Media Monitoring: TweetDeck or SproutSocial? - Social Media Examiner
“New social media management tools are popping up like weeds and a couple of them might end up being roses. One new such tool is SproutSocial.com. Time is money, as they say, and although TweetDeck is handy, its functionality is limited to the few things it does well. SproutSocial was launched last November and represents a big step up in terms of performance for a modest monthly fee of $9/month-a fee you may or may not be ready to pay. Among the many things I like about SproutSocial, an elegantly designed browser-based “social media management” tool, is its ability to save you time on multiple fronts.”
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Facebook “Likes” More Profitable Than Tweets [STUDY] - Mashable
“If event registration site Eventbrite’s experience is any indication, social media marketers looking for monetary returns on their efforts might get more value from Facebook than Twitter. The company announced Wednesday that an average tweet about an event drove 80 cents in ticket sales during the past six months, whereas an average Facebook Like drove $1.34. The study, which used in-house social analytics tools to track ticket sales on the site, was a continuation of a similar analysis the company released in October after analyzing data from a 12-week period.”
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Obama Administration Calls for Privacy Legislation - Ad Age Digital 
“The Wall Street Journal reported that a group of 30 online ad companies is looking to support a do-not-track tool that would work with web browsers, which is different from the About Ads program, suggesting that there’s a fair amount of jockeying going on to curry favor with government regulators and consumers. But while some bills that have recently been proposed center around a do-not-track tool, the bill that has the best chance of passing so far, according to insiders, is the draft legislation currently being circulated by Sen. John Kerry, D.-Mass., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., which, so far, does not include a call for a do-not-track provision.”
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3 SEO Myths About Information Architecture - Search Engine land
“PageRank sculpting, siloing, link-juice flowage, SEO architecture — these are keyword phrases that often make my skin crawl. The reason? I commonly hear these words come from search engine optimization (SEO) professionals in reference to a website’s information architecture (IA). Yet, when I am among my information architecture colleagues? I rarely hear these words, if at all.  No professional information architect, that I know of, determines a website’s information architecture and corresponding navigation schemes based on a math equation from Google. To help SEOs understand an information architect’s point of view, here are some of the common myths and misconceptions that search engine optimizers have about information architecture.”
Read More

A comprehensive list of noteworthy news can be found at http://delicous.com/RedDoorInteractive. Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter if you’d like up to the minute updates on our latest posts http://twitter.com/reddoor.

Old School to New School and Back Again

ColoradoBiz
Anne Buehner, Associate Strategist of Social Media at Red Door Interactive

Nothing is more social than hundreds of people, alone at home, signing into Twitter for a midnight snack of connection, right? Unfortunately, while many companies have given the green light to ‘do’ social media, setting up Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts, this pursuit of social media greatness appears to  be creating a sort of temporary amnesia when it comes to the more traditional aspects of relationship building. What about the power of touch or shared oxygen? 

The truly thrilling frontier is a place where online and offline connections exist in tandem, not in isolation. Smart marketers will begin to put forth campaign ideas and social media tenets that not only dissolve the divide between on- and offline communities, but extend and synthesize stakeholders to connect with brands and one-another at multiple (digital and physical) touch points.  Here are five ways that companies can begin to move in this direction.

1. Promote and recognize your social media community in-store.  From store windows and t-shirts to receipts and napkins, companies are taking advantage of every opportunity to remind their customers that they’re on social media.  For example, Red Door client Charlotte Russe recently launched an in-store campaign that included signage and window displays featuring Facehbook comments, tweets, and photos from social media fans. A mobile and QR Code sign up made it easy for customers to become a part of the social community while still in the store.
2. Create a live experience and provide a way for participants to promote it for you.  The Jeep Rocks & Road Tour organized off-road course events across the country that put people behind the wheel of its new model SUV. After going through a variety of terrain – including a nearly vertical slope – participants were given the opportunity to record a video recounting their experience and could automatically post it on their own social networks.  To rev up the momentum of this campaign, Jeep also posted a few of these videos on its YouTube channel.
3. Facilitate Meetups to bring your community together for events in real life.  Social technology blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch have both created MeetUp groups in an effort to bring members of the community together.  For its fifth anniversary, TechCrunch encouraged its community of “crunchies” to gather face-to-face and utilized meetup.com as a channel for folks to connect and plan events in their respective cities. In addition, Mashable, encourages its readers to meet monthly in more than 1,150 cities around the world. 
   
   Not only does this provide an opportunity to meet face-to-face with followers, but it can increase awareness of a brand and Twitter account.  Attendees are also encouraged to tweet live from the events, thus updating their networks about the brand and activities. 
4. Engage your online community with an offline scavenger hunt.  Rather than offering prizes through online contests, brands can now mobilize followers through hybrid contents that involve offline activities.  For example, Red Door client ESET leveraged the early adopter crowd at SXSW last year and promoted its anti-virus software through a scavenger hunt that included a photo booth and interactive media wall. In addition, skateboarder Tony Hawk has hosted the “Tony Hawk Treasure Hunt” for two consecutive years and provides his followers with opportunities to win prizes that are hidden in more than 60 cities around the world by posting clues on his Twitter account.  This tactic alone helped increase Tony’s Twitter followers significantly. 
   
   Retailers can also execute similar tactics to spur foot traffic in-store and direct customers to Twitter – or any online community – for exclusive contest information.
5. Encourage check-ins. While the onslaught of location-based “check-in” services may seem overwhelming, there are many benefits to offering incentives for check-ins.  Facebook Deals, for example, allows brands to drive those who like their business in-store and customers to Facebook for the deal, thus marrying the on- and offline communities.   When consumers check-in to a location from most geo-location applications, it automatically posts to their Facebook and Twitter feeds (if they set up their accounts for social sharing).  Thus, check-ins can increase a brand’s exposure exponentiall.
   
   Vons and Pepsi both put a twist on basic check-ins when they teamed up with Foursquare. The Vons/Pepsi/Foursquare partnership made it easy for consumers to integrate their Vons Club card with Foursquare and receive special savings from Pepsi. Applications like Foursquare provide ample opportunities for business to offer incentives and syncing loyalty programs with social check-ins is a win-win for consumers and businesses.

Consumers are constantly seeking ways to translate their social media interactions into something more tangible. With new and evolving technologies, now is the time for companies to get creative and examine opportunities to extend the conversation, transparently and authentically, into the daily lives of their social communities. By engaging the social media family across multiple channels, platforms and locations, a brand can build and expand a loyal community of enthusiasts.

Read Story on ColoradoBiz.com

 About the author: Anne Buehner is the Associate Strategist of Social Media at Red Door Interactive, an Internet Presence Management firm with offices in San Diego and Denver that helps organizations profit from their web initiatives. Clients include Cricket Communications, Garden Fresh Corp, California Avocado Commission, Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill and PETCO. She can be reached at abuehner@reddoor.biz or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anneripley.

January 21st, 2011 – Welcome to another RDI Click! post. Click! is a weekly collection of digital news highlights from Red Door’s most inquiring minds.

Click, enjoy and learn.

We’ve done the hard work for you.

Mobile Shopping Growing Dramatically– MediaPost
“Mobile Shopping indicates that 33% of all survey respondents had accessed a retailer’s website using a mobile phone (compared to 24% in 2009), and an additional 26% said that they plan to use their mobile phone to visit a company’s website, mobile website, or mobile application in the future. In other words, more than half of all online shoppers are either already using or plan to use their phones for retail purposes.”
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Enhancing Ad Campaigns With CRM - ClickZ
“Social media is changing the way we approach CRM, but the tenets of good customer service remain. If you can combine customer appreciation, authenticity, and effort with your existing online media, you may end up with a campaign that serves two vital goals instead of one.”
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SEO and Integration With Social Media - ClickZ
“Social media is big – and getting bigger. Use the power of social media to support your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy by integrating basic SEO best practices and using the same keywords you know work in SEO, in those environments to engage a wider audience and improve your online presence.”
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How to fix the REAL reasons behind your abandoned shopping carts – It’s Digital Marketing
“You need to provide assurance. That could be via authorative trust marks, such as secure transactions seals, badges from trade association or industry body membership, logos of media you have appeared in/on or customer or influencer testimonials (social proof). These will help build credibility and confidence in your brand.”
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Research: Social Gaming to Grow by 30% in US by 2012 - Social Times
“Social gamers in US are expected to grow by 29.5 percent i.e. from 53 million in 2010 to 68.7 million in 2012, according to eMarketers. This growth will eventually result in 29 percent of the Internet population in the US playing social games by 2012. eMarketers estimates that the growth pattern of the social gaming industry will remain in place for at least next two year.”
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Facebook vs. Twitter Infographic - Digital Surgeons
“Facebook vs. Twitter a visual breakdown of the 2010 social demographics.”
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A comprehensive list of noteworthy news can be found at http://delicous.com/RedDoorInteractive. Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter if you’d like up to the minute updates on our latest posts http://twitter.com/reddoor.