6 Questions on Social Media with Jeffrey Stewart

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Jeffrey Stewart is the Chief Executive Officer at Creative Capital Group, a digital agency focused on creating branded solutions through online, mobile and social platforms.   As one of Los Angeles’s fastest growing agencies, Jeff has been an integral part in developing social media marketing campaigns that have garnered national attention and major celebrity & athlete participation.

Prior to starting Creative Capital Group, Jeff was an integral part of two next-generation technology and internet focused hedge fund/late-stage venture firms, overseeing the firms’ marketing, client service and business development initiatives. Jeff’s additional Wall Street experience includes positions in institutional fixed income trading and research/marketing.

1. How did you get your start in the industry?

Having spent the majority of my career analyzing technology and Internet businesses from an investment perspective, I was well aware of the power of social media marketing and fascinated by the dynamic nature of the ever-changing digital landscape.  When we decided to start the agency, our initial clients were constantly asking us to create custom campaigns using various social media platforms. Our growth brought forth management roles in major social campaigns with celebrities, athletes & brands that have demonstrated to us the inherent value in carefully orchestrated social experiences for users and seamlessly executed campaigns for our clients.

2. What is the biggest challenge facing your industry?

As society and business embrace social media, the biggest challenge facing our clients is how to create a highly engaging branded experience that delivers measurable results.  Social media is not about the number of people brands have in their communities, but rather the level of engagement that they see and with whom.  The faster you start measuring your success, the better.  The unique power of social is that it breaks from traditional demographic segmentation and allows a brand to literally identify the individual person – not just a broad target group – who is likely to be interested in its message. Savvy brands are learning to harness that power, and use it to listen, communicate and share in ways that ensure their message and their brand are being showcased in the most advantageous way.   Whether we are pre-launching a new product or creating a celebrity campaign to drive charitable donations, each campaign needs to be analyzed from both the brand and consumer perspective. From there, the final challenge is applying the results of our analysis in order to choose the most effective mediums from a vast and crowded social landscape.  The immediacy of social gives brands & consumers direct access to one another, the goal is to make sure the campaign addresses both simultaneously.

3. What is the secret to your social media success?

We take a different approach to social media.  While most agencies are comprised of individuals drawing from a media-only background, our finance, architecture and entrepreneurial backgrounds allow us to analyze our client’s business model and target audience through a much more multi-faceted scope. We combine proven business and media prowess in order to deliver custom social media experiences that reinforce the brand and incentivize audiences to participate, all tailored to a client’s unique business. Our success has come from our analytical approach to social media and ability to match effective methods with the right audience, as we strive to create branded campaigns that build brand loyalty through multimedia experiences (competitions, social gaming, video content, customer service).

In addition to our analytical approach to social media, we provide a wide variety of creative and development solutions that compliment and enhance all our campaigns.  Our services include custom website designs, mobile applications, search engine optimization, social media landing pages, and complimentary advertising & marketing campaigns.

4. What do you think is the future of social media?

Social media is constantly evolving with the convergence of the physical and digital worlds, and it will be even more prominent in the media landscape in the years ahead.  People are replacing information as the core around which the Internet is built, and the online experience is becoming increasingly customized to include highly targeted information, ads, communications and search results.  We will no longer need to search for information, as collected data will drive information to find us. Advertisers will look to social as the most valuable form of bought media as it gives way to the owned and earned in ways other media never could have done.  Secondly, we see the major social networks growing in their support and integration of social shopping (online e-commerce) and social gaming, as each will become a bigger part of the overall experience.  Thirdly, social networking will fragment as new companies enter the landscape and enhance the social experience in ways yet to be seen.  With each new company, we will see even further customization of your social experience and the future of the social media agency will be to master adapting at the speed of “share!”

5. What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out?

Brands need to find a variety of high-value ways to communicate with their target audience. First, understand your target audience and how they engage with social networks.  Every audience is different; understanding their online interests and behaviors is critical in deciding how best to market your business to them. Enrich your campaign by including methods that search out individuals with proven track records of interest and/or conversion with your brand or brands similar to your own.  Secondly, do not make any assumptions.  Understanding your target demographic requires starting with a blank slate, as you will be surprised to learn the habits of your target audience.  Extract value from your media campaign itself through detailed reporting, and ensure that your campaign can adapt on a moment’s notice in response to the data supplied by your analytics.  Third, ask your current clients how they perceive your brand.  Armed with all this data, you can script a social media campaign that brings your brand and audience together. The final and most important piece of the puzzle is mapping the plan of how you will drive your target’s social experience.  Never forget to extract value from your media campaign itself through detailed reporting of behaviors, and ensure that your campaign can adapt on a moment’s notice in response to the data supplied by your analytics to maximize optimization.

6. Where can we find you on the web/on Twitter/Facebook/etc.?

• Company Website:  www.creativecapitalgroup.biz
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CreativeCapitalGroup
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreystewart35
• Twitter: @ccreativegroup

Part 1: Cloud Computing

Over the last decade, technology has transformed the world of business in profound ways and 2010 has been no different.  From the advent of cloud computing for businesses to the continued proliferation of mobile commerce to the maturation of social networks, 2010 is providing increased opportunities for businesses to create efficiencies through technology.

As technology continues to dominate our personal lives, integrating innovative technologies into traditional business models has become more difficult. Effectively leveraging these technologies requires a unified strategy and implementation process, but if done correctly, can lead to a significantly enhanced customer experience, increased sales and a more targeted sales & marketing effort.

The question is – How?

1. Cloud Computing

The adoption of cloud services and cloud infrastructure will allow businesses to increase productivity faster.  Cloud services provide open capabilities available through open API’s or direct access. Everything from Salesforce.com to Twitter’s open APIs to Google maps fall in the realm of cloud services.

With the exciting competition going on in mobile brought about from the success of the iPhone and the introduction of Android, we are going to see mobile be a standard part of your Web application development. The days of it being nice to have budget for such efforts are gone. Not only will a cool iPhone application bring marketing value, it’ll bring power users—just the zeitgeist you want to tap.

We know for a fact that the most successful brands in 2010 will be the social brands with social voices operating in real-time. The notion of social voices implies real people participating, talking and guiding consumers on behalf of their companies in an engaging and conversational manner across every consumer touchpoint, digital or traditional. But a social voice alone is not going to be enough. A key ingredient will be working in real-time across the spectrum. That means real-time in terms of the campaigns that are launched and executed, the miniapplications that are developed and pushed out, the products launched in response to changing needs, the targeted consumers and the customer services offered.

Cloud services are a necessity to deliver on the promise of social brands. You simply cannot launch a digital product, run an online marketing campaign cost effectively or reach new users quickly unless you are using cloud services. Nor can you integrate your own marketing efforts into the broader social Web without leveraging cloud services in the same way as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Why? Because once integrated, these social applications can drive immense traffic to your digital product, Website or microsite when you least expect it, resulting in you needing to scale your infrastructure up quickly and roll out new features to capitalize on the increased attention.

Social brands will know how to leverage technologies like Facebook Connect to drive traffic and eyeballs to the brands. Open APIs will help brands get their word out on platforms like Twitter. Building small distributed applications will make sure people interact with your brand anywhere they are, whether it’s on an iPhone, Android or HP Printer. While these social cloud services are broad and far reaching, you do need to proceed with caution.

As the prolific growth in social media has brought our world together in ways never thought possible, medical practitioners have not yet fully embraced social media to drive sales, referrals and to establish a local or national expertise.

Below you will find an overview of strategies that can be implemented cost-effectively to drive patient acquisitions, while increasing your practices exposure online.

Medical Professionals are Slow Adopters to Social Media

Social media is made up of many websites, strategies, processes and more, but at its core is the ability to directly connect with your target audience in a compelling way each day. Social media is word of mouth at its finest, but without a well thought out strategy, success rates will suffer. An action plan helps you organize your campaign more effectively. You need to address certain topics, such as how long do I want to spend each day on social media and what role do I want to take? What strategies do I feel will add the most value to our target audience? How can I give back to the community? An action plan should have clearly defined goals that enable you to run a highly effective and efficient campaign. (more…)

The emergence of social media technology has brought with it great change. Information distribution, consumer behavior, and personal and corporate transparency – whether welcomed or unwelcomed – have all changed. The desire of individuals to express opinion has not. Neither has the natural desire to congregate, converse and to socialize.

Creative Capital provides social media solutions that allow companies to use technology in innovative ways to ignite and cultivate conversations. We develop campaigns from concept to implementation for social media marketing, advertising and audience outreach. We understand the social media landscape and how to deliver complete solutions that drive results.

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