We have some pretty cool jobs here at SM.   Despite the fact that we get to play on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc through out the day, there are still things that get repetitive.  One in particular is designing a Twitter theme.  Yes I know this sounds silly, but when you are mocking something up you want to know that it’s sized right and the color scheme works without having to go back to make those mundane changes.  Designers like things to be quick when they can be.  Thats why we use the best tools that help us maximize our time by making those repetitive things easier.

We have found ourselves doing a lot of repetitive things when it comes to our unique niche as a New Media Agency.  A solution to these types of tasks was to create a digital library of  social web design resources for our in-house creatives that would simplify things.  This has proven to be a smart investment of our time.

Our team noticed however that there is an absence of quality tools, when designing for the social web, to be found outside of our own library.  Other than our friends at Teehan + Lax, who pioneered the PSD UIs of the iPhone and iPad, there are few that take it upon themselves to give back and share the wealth.  We decided that we are going to change that.  We are going to hand over the keys to the vault and start sharing what has helped us become better as creatives and as an agency.

Our first release is a Vector User Interface of the New Twitter

As requested here are some different versions:

• Download CS5 Version
• Download CS3 Version

We have created this file as a resourse for all the designers out there to use as they want.  We only ask that you do not repost this file for download on any site with out our formal written approval.  We do encourage others to share this valuable resource and we only ask that you redirect people to our site to download the file.  Creating resources like this, to be used for the benefit of everyone, still takes time so please give us credit and relink to our blog when possible.  We hope you find this useful and a helpful resource.

1. The Conversation

Listening, Learning, and Sharing

2. Branding

Be Consistent.

3. Creating Content

Useful, Valuable, Accurate, and Appealing

4. Motivation

The right Personality meets the right Situation.

5. Earning Every Fan

Engagement + Interaction = Brand Advocates

To get a better understanding of how you can apply these elements to your business, let’s look at each element in more detail.

1. The Conversation

The first step in creating a social media strategy is to listen. And then listen some more. This is an extremely important and if done improperly your strategy will be unsuccessful, end of story. You must make sure you are listening in on every platform your brand is being mentioned. If you don’t think your being mentioned on a certain platform, double check to make sure. Odds are you’re being mentioned across a wider range of platforms than you may think.

2. Branding

Using social media to brand your company can be a major asset if it is done right. One of the main focuses on branding is consistency. Your brand image must be the same across all platforms, otherwise it will be ineffective or even destructive to your company’s wellbeing. If people can not easily figure out who you are and what you are all about, your brand becomes inauthentic and unreliable. On the other hand, if your message is clear and unchanging, your audience will be more likely to to give you credibility and offer their loyalty.

3. Creating Content

Creating content for social media is often a hit or miss thing; either your audience takes it and eats it up, or they never even take it. Each online community will more than likely go through an experimental phase with each finding what works for them. Even if you know your audience up and down, they may often surprise you; engaging in content you though was not so good, or ignoring content you thought they would love. Though content varies across communities, this infographic points out content essentials. Your members must find your content useful, valuable, accurate, and appealing. Combining these essential elements in your content will yield amazing results.

4. Motivation

What motivates people to participate in social media? More importantly, what motivates people to participate in your online community? To answer this question you must know and understand your audience and why they are there in the first place. Are they part of your community because you an industry leader offering valuable information or maybe because are you offering your members some type of reward? Knowing the answers to questions like these is particularly important when putting together a social media content strategy. If members are joining mostly to receive valuable information, and you are only providing them with groupons; chances are they won’t be apart of your community very long.

5. Earning Every Fan

Social media can be bought, owned, and earned. Which is most important? The one you have to work for, of course. You can buy a message, you can own a message, but having a person willingly spread your message positively, is priceless. Earned media comes from those you have successfully engaged and interacted with; they are your brand advocates. They are your biggest asset in the world of social media and have the power to influence others. Always keep an eye on these people; if they’re happy, everyone will hear about it.

Putting it all together

As intricate as social media can be, it is important to never forget the basics. Create a relevant conversation full of valuable content that’s branded consistently and you will earn your customer’s loyalty.

Our new design is live!

After sharing a snippet of our new design for selectivemkt.com on forrst, someone requested that we create a full size desktop wallpaper.

So… to celebrate the launch of our new website we’re giving away these free desktop wallpapers: UFOs with Binary Code Tractor Beams

UFO with Binary Code Tractor Beam Desktop Wallpaper Background

Download the UFO Wallpaper

Invasion of UFOs with Binary Code Tractor Beam Desktop Wallpaper Background

Download UFO Invasion Wallpaper

The background design features a simple little graphic taken from the Technology section of our home page.

“We may, or may not, have reverse-engineered our technology from a UFO that crashed behind our barn. Either way, we handle the nerdy stuff so you can run your business.”

We really do work in a barn, by the way.

Enjoy the wallpapers and let us know what you think of our new site design.

Hub-and-Spoke Approach to Social Engagement

As brands begin to embrace the power of social media, many struggle to decide where to focus brand engagement. Some assert that online efforts should reach users where they are — on social networks. Others argue that brands should create unique online communities in which people can come together around a brand or a cause.

The hub-and-spoke approach to social engagement focuses on leveraging the company website while integrating social networks for greater reach and impact. This approach seeks to engage people where they are, on social networks, but provide a central “hub” for them to come to. The hub is generally the company website or blog, and it serves as the base of operations. The hub syndicates material out to all the spokes, which consist of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare, YouTube, Flickr, Yelp and Wikipedia. The brand engages in each of the spokes, but the spokes ultimately bring the conversation back to the website and direct traffic there.

Key to this approach is the integration of the hub and the spokes. When a brand’s website serves as its hub, the brand’s social media pages and its blog should feature links to the company website. Likewise, the brand’s website should prominently display links to all the brand’s social media pages, as well as its blog. Brands should take care to avoid directing visitors away from the site without encouraging them to share content. For example, the TL Signature Salon website features a Facebook “Like” button. When viewers click the button, they are directed away from the site, but they are encouraged to “like” the brand on Facebook, rather than just visit its Facebook fan page.

Similarly, brands that host an online community, such as Pepsi’s Pepsi Refresh Project, can encourage user interactivity by utilizing a social login system. For example, The Washington Post enables users to sign into the site with either their Facebook account or Washington Post account. This encourages sharing on Facebook, and enhances the seamless integration between the Washington Post’s website and its social sites.

With this approach, both the hub and the spokes act as channels to build and measure users’ engagement. Ideally, a well-strategized hub-and-spoke system results in social omnipresence, in which brands have presence in many external communities and are fully connected with their target audiences. And as important as maintaining a solid presence in those communities, it is important for companies to maintain a consistent brand identity — so that customers feel they are relating with the company or brand and are comfortable engaging in that conversation.

So the internet at Selective Marketing’s world headquarters was down Monday morning, a continuation of an outage that most of our team endured Sunday at their homes. And as we learned by contacting more of our business associates through the morning, it was an outage that permeated much of the Tuscaloosa metro area. For those of you not familiar with our region, it also includes the campus of the University of Alabama — and its approximately 30,000 students.

What we learned beyond that, however, came from the most unexpected of places: Twitter direct messaging.

Every time we face a power or internet outage at SM, Joshua Pekera, SM’s Creative Director, exhibits the most endearing habit of calling and asking very direct questions to hapless-sounding operators at these companies who suddenly find they are the ones with the misfortune of Pekera’s verbal barrage.

Sunday being a chips-and-salsa-fueled day of rest in the Pekera household, he took things one step further — casting a verbal jab (or 12 … who’s counting) at our conglomerate-sized internet provider (which we will not name, but rhymes with “Tomcast”) via his Twitter link.

Then something odd happened, something that most customers of this massive corporation (which rhymes with “Promcast”) have yet to experience: Real, live feedback — in the form of a direct message from a person named Bill at the corporation’s Philadelphia-based offices.

Bill evidently saw Joshua’s tweet taking exception to the provider’s outage, replied directly to him Monday morning that he was gathering information on the outage and hoped to have an update soon. A half-hour later, Bill messaged again with information that there was a fiber cut in town, and that crews were on site.

Needless to say, the well-meaning operators that Joshua usually deals with in these kind of situations wouldn’t sniff this level of information. Heck, Joshua and SM now had more information about the outage than the local news outlets did. And when our service came back on a short while later, we were relieved but not surprised — because our main man Bill told us they were on the case.

What Bill did while representing his corporation (it is OK to name them now … Comcast!) was noteworthy in that it is pretty much exactly what we advise our clients to do in a crisis situation — monitor social media platforms and perform sentiment tracking to see what the world is saying about it, respond directly and honestly with pertinent information, assess the problem, then give more feedback.

“It isn’t a marketing push, but is really all about customer service,” says Jenni Moyer, Comcast’s Senior Director of Corporate Communications. “Maybe three years ago, we put a digital care team in place who are part of our national customer service folks here in Philadelphia. They are observing the conversations about Comcast in a number of spaces — on forums, Twitter, Facebook, using Google blog search tools, etc.

“If they come across one where someone is expressing frustration about us, they will say ‘Hi, I am with Comcast, can I help?” From there, they usually take the conversation offline to work with folks without the space restriction of Twitter to see if they can help with individual issues.”

“Because it is in real-time, you are in the moment and can potentially deal with it in that moment and with that immediacy. How that has evolved is a part of our digital care strategy,” Moyer says. “You used to be able to call 800 number, and now can e-mail and chat, and social media is the next progression. … These guys are out there doing what they do, and it is all about customer service. It has a halo effect, if you will, to position Comcast as listening to our customers, but that isn’t why we do it. We want our customers to have a way to contact us more directly.”

Obviously, Comcast clearly is one company that is utilizing social media correctly — both with their merry band of Twitterers and through their blog. Bill and Co. are working to respond to issues exactly by the book, and they made one customer happy. Kudos.

Social media has revolutionized how marketers communicate with consumers, and businesses are finally beginning to grasp the importance of social media. Though social media channels can be powerful tools for marketers, there are some concepts marketers must understand before they can successfully leverage the power of social media.

It’s not a one-way conversation

In order to successfully market products or services via social media, the brand must effectively engage consumers. Don’t just try to sell your products and services; canned marketing messages will do nothing to spark interest in your brand’s social media campaign. Engage in real conversation with consumers and respond to their comments about your brand, both negative and positive. Post interesting and relevant information, and join the conversation in the community you wish to reach.

It’s not free

Many companies make the mistake of assuming that social media marketing costs nothing, as establishing a social media account is generally free. However, in order to use social media successfully, companies must invest time, and a lot of it. Building a successful social media campaign requires people, technology and lots of time, all of which are limited resources that incur costs. Moreover, the better the campaign, the more time and effort will be put into it, meaning companies must be willing to invest more to see more results.

Below are 10 tips for effectively building and maintaining a social media campaign.

10 Tips for Building Your Brand With Social Media

1. Hire the right social media manager. The individual behind a business’s social media activities essentially acts as the face of the company. As such, it is essential to choose a social media manager who is not only proficient with social media, but who will represent your brand well. Brain Solis, author of Engage, recently touched on this point in an article on Mashable.com. “Don’t just put the person familiar with social networking in front of the brand,” Solis said.
2. Have a social media policy. A social media policy should introduce the purpose for your brand’s presence on social networks. It should hold employees responsible for what they write online, and lay out consequences for violating rules. The social media policy should also state that all company communications should be honest and fair.
3. Know your audience. Before you design a social media campaign, understand who you are targeting. Determine the primary, secondary and tertiary audiences for your brand, and learn more about each audience. What are their interests? What are they talking about on social networks? How is your competition communicating with these audiences online? Once you learn more about your audiences, you can design a social media strategy that interests your audiences and meets their needs.
4. Maintain brand consistency. Register the same username for all your social media accounts to make it easier for consumers to find you. Even if you are not using a social media platform, reserve your brand’s username on that platform so you can maintain consistency should your company decide to establish a presence there. Also consider the tone and voice of the content posted by your brand, and be sure these are consistent across different social media channels.
5. Specialize, don’t generalize. A host of social media platforms exist, but don’t feel the need to establish a presence on every site. Determine which social networks your target audience use the most, and focus on these.
6. Monitor the conversation. Social media allows news and opinions to spread in seconds, so it is imperative to monitor social networks for positive and negative chatter about your brand. Quickly responding to comments, both negative and positive, will foster trust and loyalty to the brand.
7. Strategically post at certain times of day. You should time your posts for the time of day your audience is most likely to use social media. This will vary greatly among different audiences. When considering the time of day your audience accesses social media, keep in mind that many U.S. businesses block social networks, such as Facebook, in the workplace. Therefore, you should post early in the morning, during lunch hour and after 5 p.m. to most effectively reach working individuals. In contrast, stay-at-home mothers are likely to use social media during the day, while college students use it late at night. You can find out when to best reach your audience by analyzing traffic statistics over a period of time. Be sure to look at statistics at each social media site your brand utilizes, as times for the highest levels of traffic differ across social networks.
8. Integrate social media into all of your communications, both online and offline. Be sure your company’s website prominently displays links to its social media pages to signal their importance and encourage viewers to easily engage with the brand. Social media initiatives should also be promoted in all print ads, promotional materials, commercials, billboards, and other communications. Include links to social media pages in your e-mail signature, as well.
9. Set specific goals. First, decide what you want from your social media efforts. Think in terms of both qualitative and quantitative results. Results may be qualitative, as in increased brand awareness, increased brand loyalty, improved brand image or increased customer feedback. Results may also be quantitative, such as increased store traffic, reduced customer support costs and increased sales. Set specific goals for these and other metrics, then assess your progress on a monthly basis.
10. Measure the results. Social media can have a tremendous impact on a business, but financial results are not immediate. Social media efforts are about building relationships and creating brand loyalty, which in the long run, should translate into solid financial returns and increased store traffic. Begin by measuring site traffic and interactions such as retweets, likes, bookmarks, etc., then go farther. Rather than looking at the number of followers, look at the number of people who filled out forms for more information, the number of customers who used a coupon offered solely online and the number of people who took advantage of a special promotion announced on social media. Instead of simply measuring how many people liked, retweeted or commented on posts, measure how many influential people talked about your brand.

Pappy’s Comb

Billy Joe Awesome needs a new comb to stroke his cherished mullet. The houndstooth-patterned mullet comb that Pappy gave him was lost in what his family members now call the “Squirrel Incident”. Hoping to replace Pappy’s comb and regain his family’s respect, Billy Joe goes to Google.com and types “houndstooth mullet comb” in the search box. Moments later, Google magically presents Billy Joe with a list of pages about houndstooth mullet combs. Delighted, Billy Joe Awesome clicks the first link, finds the perfect comb, pays for it via PayPal, and restores his reputation as the only guy in town with a mullet sheen brought on by the expertly-milled teeth of a houndstooth mullet comb.

The End.

What can we learn from Billy Joe Awesome?

This story leaves me asking a few questions:

1. How did Google decide which web pages would show up in the list?
2. How did the first website get to the top of the list?
3. Where can I get my hands on a houndstooth mullet comb?

Let’s look at these questions one at a time.

Question 1: How does Google decide which web pages would show up in the list?

Answer: As soon as Billy Joe Awesome typed “houndstooth mullet comb” into the search box, Google went to work behind the scenes looking for pages on the internet with the phrase “houndstooth mullet comb”. The pages with the the best content and code make the list. In other words, these pages are the most relevant to the search phrase.

Question 2: How does the first website get to the top of a search result?

Answer: After finding the most relevant pages, Google decides which page is the most important, via an instantaneous and always-evolving series of algorithmic calculations. That doesn’t mean much to Billy Joe Awesome — he just wants to know where to get his coveted comb. The importance of a page within a search engine’s system is determined by how many other relevant pages link to that page.

The process of answering these two questions is called SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

Question 3: Where can I get my hands on a houndstooth mullet comb?

Sadly, the houndstooth mullet comb does not yet exist. When it does we will link to it here.

Relevance and Importance

Among the hundreds of variables a search engine examines when deciding who to list at the top of a search results page, the two main things considered are Relevance and Importance.

For Billy Joe Awesome, Relevance to him means finding a website with houndstooth mullet combs similar to the one he lost. In the same way, Relevance for search engines is measured by how the content on your page (text, images, links, rich media) relates to the keywords being searched for.

While it is “important” to work the knots out of Billy Joe Awesome’s mullet before Sunday’s big family reunion, Importance within the context of SEO is measured by how many other relevant web pages give links to your page. The best links come from other important pages and contain relevant text in the middle of relevant content.

How does Social Media affect SEO?

Social Media helps build the importance of a given web page by generating organic relevant links from social networks to your website. Every time someone shares a link from your site, Google sees that as a “vote” for your website. The more interaction between your website and social sites the more links generated, meaning your site is more likely to show up on search results pages.

Google has also started integrating Twitter into some search results, giving yet another reason to join the tweeting masses.

When creating content for your website consider these questions:

1. How relevant is the content on your page to what a potential customer might use in a search box?
2. How important is your page compared to your competitors’ relevant pages?
3. Have you shared your website’s content on popular social websites?
4. Could Billy Joe Awesome find your website if he was looking for your products or services?
5. Should you try to corner the houndstooth mullet comb market?

Super Secret SEO knowledge

The exact formula used for deciding who shows up where in search results is only known by the search engine creators themselves. Here are some of the other known factors taken into consideration by search engines like Google when analyzing a website.

• Is your website’s code properly written?
• How fast does your website load?
• How close are you to the zip code of the person searching?

All of these things, and more, can affect your performance in search results.

Mission Impossible?

Improving your website’s listing on search results pages may seem like an impossible task. However, a good Search Engine Optimizer can help you beat your competition by keeping a well-trained eye on your website’s search engine performance.

The Age Of New Media converges all kinds of rich media, applications, interactive media, and social mashups to create a sustainable conversation with customers.

Within the past decade, new media has emerged and changed the face of society — to the point where we are truly living The Age of New Media. What began with websites quickly became an entire world of new media: blogs, RSS feeds, video blogs, online newscasts, podcasts and mobile apps. Social networking sites ballooned in popularity, with Facebook gaining more than 200 million users since its inception in 2004. Photo sharing sites, such as Flickr, and video sharing sites, such as YouTube, blossomed. Today, entire virtual worlds exist in which users can interact with one another in a simulated environment that mimics real life.

The creation and adoption of all of these new applications of technology have transformed the way people consume media. More and more households have DVRs, enabling them to avoid advertisements completely. People no longer have to tune in to the television set at a certain hour to watch their favorite shows; they can simply find episodes on sites like Hulu.com and watch them anytime, anywhere. Instead of buying a newspaper each morning, people can simply visit CNN.com or subscribe to an online newspaper service. If someone wants to know the best plumber in their area, they can turn to Facebook or Twitter to request recommendations, rather than using the Yellow Pages.

All of these changes mean that marketers must adapt their strategies to keep up and reach their target audiences. New media takes a different format than traditional media, requiring marketers to take a different stance. Rather than broadcasting information from one-to-many, like television, radio or newspapers, new media broadcasts information from many-to-many. For decades, the role of marketers was similar to that of a man on a podium, shouting messages at the audience below. Now, with the emergence of social media, marketers take a more subtle role, whispering messages from ear-to-ear, rather than shouting them to the crowd.

New media channels offer many advantages to marketers. Marketers can target ads to individuals on social networks or niche interest groups, such as readers of a certain blog, rather than broad groups, such as a television audience. By advertising online, small businesses can place ads in front of millions of people, which they could never afford to do in traditional media. No longer do marketers have to target their efforts to morning newspaper readers and prime-time television viewers; with online media accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, marketers have more access to consumers for longer periods of time.

While marketers can now take advantage of the endless possibilities offered by new media, they now face new challenges. Today’s ever-changing technology requires marketers to constantly adapt strategies, learn new technologies and keep up with the latest developments in new media.

New media allow consumers to share their experiences on a large scale, giving them unprecedented control. This democratization of media entails opening the conversation to feedback both negative and positive. Companies should approach social media with a plan in place for reacting to concerns, complaints and negative chatter that could turn into a firestorm of bad publicity.

New media is still experiencing growth as late adopters continue to jump on the bandwagon, and the demographics of its users change frequently. Initially, social media users were primarily college students and young adults. Now, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults and seniors alike are all taking to social media to connect with friends. According to CheckFacebook.com, users between the ages of 35 and 44 make up 17.6 percent of the Facebook audience, while individuals ages 45 and up constitute 24.8 percent of all Facebook users. Marketers must keep up with changing demographics in order to tailor messages and effectively reach specific segments of the population.

With all the new types of media, marketers also must decide how to divide tight marketing budgets between traditional media and new media. Advertising in some types of new media is paid; marketers can place 15- or 30-second spots in online broadcasts or pay for ads on Facebook, among many other forms of paid online media. Other types of new media, such as social media, are free to use, but incur costs in the form of time and effort. Some advertising efforts should still be directed at traditional media, but each company must determine which channels reach its target audiences most effectively.

As newspaper readership continues to decline and television audiences become increasingly segmented, the advertising industry will continue to expand its presence in new media. While the methods are changing, the rules remain the same. Marketers must reach consumers where they are: online.

I got to thinking earlier Friday, during a conversation with a friend about how social media marketing works, about how I sometimes feel like I need to have multiple personalities to accurately write social media promotions and script for vastly different companies.

That isn’t a knock on any of our clients, far from it. But as the primary copywriter for a raft of varied clientele, and a 420-character ceiling looming — well, you get the picture. My friend actually quipped that maybe I should don stockings and a skirt when writing for female-targeted fanbases. That’s not going to happen, of course. But the point was valid: You have to reach that place inside your own creative process where you innately understand both the client’s needs and their clientele’s desires to hit the mark.

Getting to that point where you are concisely, lucidly and successfully connecting to the target market is a highly individual process — one that is vastly different for some, including us here at the SM Design Studio. I tend to need to take a walk outside and pick a couple weeds out of the flowerbed by the front door when switching from client to client — the equivalent of smelling coffee beans in between testing fragrances at the department store. Then, to “wire in”, the earplugs go in (to drown out some background noise more than to listen to music) and I start thinking about being our client’s customer.

Who am I? Where am I when I am reading this Facebook post or Twitter tweet? What do I like? What do I frequent online? What is MY dialect? Do I speak online in OMGs and LOLs? Or do I tweet in the King’s English? Is that dialect somewhere in between?

Because every one of our social media clients is unique, naturally, and we have more and more of them … I tend to look like a hobo walking around our parking lot before disappearing between immaculately-weeded flowerbeds before sinking into my chair and listening to my non-music. But I at least won’t be wearing nylons (or camo, or pink hair extensions … you get the drift). But the process is definitely worth the result: A tailored, custom package that our clients each feel like is actually “them” talking to their growing fanbases.

This is the opposite of what we wanted SM's Social Media Policy to look like.

Among the interesting realizations we happened upon at Selective Marketing in the past few months was that we were creating all kinds of new media and social media mashups for clients — which includes ongoing education — without spelling out our own policies.

That was easy to forget, seeing as how we didn’t actually have a social media policy of our own. As odd as that sounds, it just never occurred to us. After all, we all ARE on social media all day, are all relatively intelligent, and seem to have a decent handle on ethics and what to do and not to do …

But we never spelled it out. And we should have. So we did.

As you can imagine, with a bunch of creative souls each chiming in their thoughts, this was quite the process. We wanted to define what should be done without curtailing what shouldn’t be done — essentially providing more of a vision than a list of instructions. And because each of us defines the best-practice use of social media, in its varied forms, slightly differently, well, suffice to say we gave our e-mail server a workout.

In the end, naturally, we at SM consider this to be more of a living document than one we will begin chiseling in stone. That is, after all, what social media itself is — a constantly evolving vehicle for communicating and sharing.

SM SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY

OVERVIEW

Selective Marketing exists as a new media company, designing strategies, applications and mashups for social media and websites. Thus, we have a vested interest in populating the social media sphere across multiple platforms — and ask our team members to do the same.

This policy was formed largely to ensure that each SM team member engages in social media productively and with the company’s core values in mind.

VISION

The vision of the Selective Marketing to achieve sustainable growth online and offline is guided by certain shared values that we live by as an organization and as individuals:

• LEADERSHIP: The courage to shape a better future; To get ahead in this company, we are not looking for only followers, we want innovators and people who take charge of their tasks
• COLLABORATION: Leveraging our collective genius
• INTEGRITY: Being real; Being honest to both our clients, ourselves and each other
• ACCOUNTABILITY: Recognizing that if it is to be, it’s up to me; Delivering on time, when agreed upon, and to the appropriate level of SM quality
• PASSION: Showing commitment in heart and mind; Having fun!
• DIVERSITY: Being as inclusive as our brands; Seeking to learn and incorporate different points of view and opinions
• QUALITY: Ensuring what we do, we do well — second to none
• EDUCATION: Challenging ourselves to constantly learn and evolve in our chosen field, but also in other fields so we become more well-rounded as individuals; We want to develop leadership, both in our fields and with our people skills; We want the SM team to constantly be eyes for the company, looking for new technology, ideas, processes, and strategies that could help our clients and SM be the best

SOCIAL MEDIA SITES WE RECOMMEND JOINING

(adding your company photo or drawing, and business contact information, to each)

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Flickr
• LinkedIn

LIKE US ONLINE, TOO!

To best become a part of the SM online family, we would appreciate you “liking” us on our various corporate social media platforms. Also we encourage you to install our custom app on Facebook:

• www.facebook.com/SelectiveMarketing
• www.twitter.com/SelectiveMkt
• www.flickr.com/photos/selectivemkt
• http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3353494

SM’S EXPECTATIONS FOR TEAM MEMBERS IN SOCIAL MEDIA

There’s a big difference in speaking “on behalf of Selective Marketing” and speaking “about” Selective Marketing. This set of 5 principles refers to those personal or unofficial online activities where you might refer to SM.

1. Adhere to the Code of Business Conduct and other applicable policies. All Company associates, from the Chairman to every intern, are subject to the Company’s Code of Business Conduct in every public setting.

2. You are responsible for your actions. Anything you post that can potentially tarnish the Company’s image will ultimately be your responsibility. We do encourage you to participate in the social media space, but urge you to do so properly, exercising sound judgment and common sense.

3. Be a “scout” for compliments and criticism. Even if you are not an official online spokesperson for the Company, you are one of our most vital assets for monitoring the social media landscape. If you come across positive or negative remarks about the Company or its brands online that you believe are important, consider sharing them by forwarding them to dwasson@selectivemkt.com.

4. Let the subject matter experts respond to negative posts. You may come across negative or disparaging posts about the Company or its brands, or see third parties trying to spark negative conversations. Unless you are a certified online spokesperson, avoid the temptation to react yourself. Pass the post(s) along to our official in‐market spokespersons who are trained to address such comments, at dwasson@selectivemkt.com.

5. Be conscious when mixing your business and personal lives. Online, your personal and business personas are likely to intersect. The Company respects the free speech rights of all of its associates, but you must remember that customers, colleagues and supervisors often have access to the online content you post. Keep this in mind when publishing information online that can be seen by more than friends and family, and know that information originally intended just for friends and family can be forwarded on. Remember NEVER to disclose non‐public information of the Company (including confidential information), and be aware that taking public positions online that are counter to the Company’s interests might cause conflict.

6. All that said, do talk about the company online! Tell your friends, family and everyone the cool stuff you are doing! Post from time to time “finished” work (i.e., work that has already been approved and is currently IN USE by the client …) to portfolio sites — anything from thebestdesigns.com to creattica.com! A couple posts a week to various sites like that, in addition to writing a blog post to our blog every now and then, goes a LONG way toward enhancing our social media influence.

SM’S LIST OF OTHER “DOS” AND “DON’TS”

• Remember that social media is FUN.
• Do talk about what you do, in both a general manner AND encouraging tone, to your friends in social media.
• Consider yourself an “SM Evangelist” when you engage in social media. Help teach others about how to use social media; be involved on various forums, blogs, social sites; get others to follow the SM blog and “like” the SM page. Try to help generate business through these sites.
• “Like” Selective Marketing and your fellow Team Members on Facebook, follow @SelectiveMkt and your fellow Team Members on Twitter, RSS-feed our blog, join the SM LinkedIn group.
• Embrace and feel welcome to offer your general professional expertise across the social media space you are most comfortable in. If that is Twitter, great. Facebook? Awesome. Primarily a Flickr Freak? Fantastic.
• Be yourself on your social sites. Yes, our clients expect us to be professional. But they also expect us to be people. Be sure to show your best side to them!
• Don’t post sensitive/confidential information about SM clients/potential SM clients/SM team members/yourself on your social media platforms. Nor should you discuss publicly any future SM systems, protocol, projects or products/services.