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Social media, tech & marketing events: June

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

H ere’s our roundup of social media, tech and marketing conferences and events scheduled for the month of June. For the full year, see our Calendar of 2010 social media, tech and marketing conferences . It’s another busy month, and I’ll be kicking it off by flying to New York today for the Mobilize Your Cause Bootcamp (today’s the last day to register) and Personal Democracy Forum (follow the proceedings with the #pdf10 hashtag on Twitter). Note that we’ve published a roundup of social change conferences and events for June on our sister site, Socialbrite . We’ll publish a list of noteworthy conferences and events on the first of each month during the year. Hope to see you at some of these! If you know of other must-attend events, please add them by posting in the comments at the bottom and I’ll add them as I can. Conference Date Place June D Conference June 1–3 Palos Verdes, Calif. The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference has been breaking news, highlighting innovation and bringing you straight-up, unvarnished conversations with the most influential figures in technology since 2003. D is different from other conferences: no canned speeches, no marketing pitches — just content. PLATO @ 50 June 2–3 Mountain View, Calif. The first-ever conference on the history of the amazing PLATO system. Come find out what social software, e-learning, online community and multiplayer games were like long before the Internet took off. Learn how the lessons of the PLATO era are still abundantly applicable today. Try out one of the fully restored original PLATO plasma-panel terminals. Personal Democracy Forum * June 2–5 New York City The annual gathering of political activists, government reform advocates and techies, with a Change Makers Bootcamp on June 2 (I’ll be co-presenting with Katrin Verclas) and an unconference for the Saturday after the formal conference ends. IABC World Conference June 6–9 Toronto The World Conference of the International Association of Business Communicators brings together 1,400 communication practitioners from 40 countries for four days of learning, camaraderie and inspiration.. RailsConf June 7–10 Baltimore, Md. RailsConf, the largest official conference dedicated to everything Rails, brings together the most innovative and successful Rails experts and companies. Learn useful information, ideas and techniques you can put to work immediately with a program designed for all levels of expertise. Internet Week NYC June 7–14 New York City Internet Week New York is a weeklong festival of events saluting NYC’s thriving Internet industry and the companies, organizations and innovators creating the future of online media. SMX Advanced June 8–9 Seattle Search Marketing Expo Advanced is the only search marketing conference designed exclusively for experienced internet marketers. Sessions are fast-paced, Q&A-packed, frequently controversial and quite informative. Connections June 8–10 Santa Clara, Calif. Connections: The Digital Living Conference and Showcase, hosted by research firm Parks Associates with support from the Consumer Electronics Association, is the executive event focused on market developments for advanced digital lifestyle solutions. Online Community Unconference June 9 Mountain View, Calif. The Online Community Unconference is a gathering of online community managers, developers, business people, tool providers and investors to discuss how to develop and grow online communities. Advertising 2.0 June 7–8 New York City The annual gathering of advertising, marketing and media execs covering global brands, marketing, mobile and media. It’s put on by Barry Diller’s IAC and Digital Hollywood. Innovation Journalism 7 June 7–9 Palo Alto, Calif. IJ-7 is a meeting place to discuss how journalism and innovation come together: How journalism affects innovation, how innovation affects journalism, how journalism covers innovation and the market for it. The conference welcomes all journalism and innovation stakeholders: journalists, industry, policy-makers in media and innovation, PR, academic researchers, faculty and students in related areas of study, other professionals connected to the news industry, as well as individuals with a special interest in journalism and innovation. VON Conference & Expo June 9–11 Washington, D.C. VON: The Voice of Network Convergence showcases the best of the global IP communications world for service providers and large enterprises. Turning Ideas Into Business June 13–16 Banff, Canada The Banff World Television Festival (BANFF) and nextMEDIA have announced an innovative strategic partnership that will see these two popular industry events run concurrently. Tabula Rasa DC June 14 McLean, VA Tabula Rasa DC assembles a master cast of innovators, developers and visionaries for hands-on guidance, creative inspiration and how-to maps for apps on the iPad and the wave of mobile, high-concept, high-touch personal computers. TWTRCON NY June 14 New York TWTRCON NY is a one-day conference focused entirely on the business use of Twitter where you’ll see case studies and learn best practices from leading organizations that are using the real-time Web to deliver bottom-line results. Enterprise 2.0 June 14–17 Boston E2 takes a strategic perspective, emphasizing the bigger picture implications of the technology and the exploration of what is at stake for organizations trying to change not only tools, but also culture and process. Social Networking Conference June 16–18 Beverly Hills, Calif. The annual event is for social networking executives who have an interest in learning about new technologies, business social networking, marketing strategies, business management, venture capital, networks and mobile telecom. Experts in management, software, mobile technology, venture capital and marketing for social networking with experience with both the mobile/wireless market and the enterprise social networking market will present. SIME Barcelona June 16–17 Barcelona, Spain SIME is northern Europe’s largest conference about the Internet and digital opportunities with events in Helsinki, Stockholm, Barcelona and now for the first time in San Francisco. SIME brings together top executives, marketing professionals, aficionados and members of the press. SIME is about how digital opportunities can convert to new business and a better world. Velocity June 22–24 Santa Clara, Calif. Now in its third year, Velocity — the Web Performance and Operations Conference from O’Reilly Media — is dedicated to helping people build a better Internet that is fast by default. Join hundreds of web developers and experts under one roof at the premier conference dedicated to building industrial strength sites at Internet speed Inbound Marketing Summit — Chicago June 23–24 Chicago Chris Brogan presents the second in a series of social influence marketing conferences for 2010. Cloud Computing World Forum June 29–30 London In this 2-day conference and exhibition, you’ll hear leading case studies about how businesses have integrated cloud computing and Enterprise 2.0 into their working practices. JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile , contact JD or leave a comment. Tweet It! Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Reddit Stumble This Post This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported . Related posts: Social media, tech, marketing events: April Social media, tech, marketing events: March Social media, tech & marketing events: May

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Social media, tech & marketing events: June

Consumer Base Makes Market Research Faster, Cheaper

Monday, May 24th, 2010

The first 459 times I suffered through product demos and webinars for market research and social media measurement solutions the companies all wound up with the same promise: We’ll give you a 50+ page PowerPoint deck each quarter that has 150 full-color charts and graphs you don’t understand or care about with a cover page of “actionable insights” that we spend about an hour coming up with all for the low, low price of $150,000 per year. Ever since, I’ve been in search of something that A) Produces more meaningful information and B) Is priced somewhere other than the “are you effin’ kidding me” range. I think I found it. Consumer Base , a new, limited offering from NetBase, takes that company’s six-year track record of experience in linguistic analysis of scientific documents for the research and development segment of large corporations, combines it with the input of an advisory council that includes market research leads from five of the top 10 consumer product goods companies in the world, and turns it into a do-it-yourself market research engine. Let me sum this up for you. If I were a brand manager for, say, Wii, I would want to know things like, what do people like and dislike about my brand. With Consumer Base, I log in, put the word “Wii” into their search and in a matter of seconds (not three months and focus groups and survey analysis later), I get this: Click for larger version All of a sudden, I see people like that my product helps people get into shape, improves their balance and helps people recovering from traumatic brain injury? Holy crap! I didn’t know that before. I can also see that they don’t like it because they might sustain injuries from it and … oh my goodness … the Wii has some connection to persistent sexual arousal syndrome and sex addiction? Uh … can someone please explain that? (Wait, I can click through and see what the posts are. I don’t have to call the research firm and wait six weeks for them to go back and read something.) When I saw Consumer Base in action last Thursday, I was immediately blown away, but also skeptical. So, instead of CEO Jonathan Spier using his pre-programmed Wii profile, I asked him to enter my preferred search term into the tool. He obliged and did a scan of Kentucky Fried Chicken. This came back: Click for larger version Again, without training the search term or algorithm, Consumer Base told me, in a matter of seconds, people dig the fact KFC offered a rain check to Oprah fans who weren’t able to get grilled chicken dinners before the stores ran out, but that there are people out there who think the restaurant’s chickens are horrible mutant freaks. Everybody’s got an opinion, I guess. The point is that without a lengthy set-up process, the Consumer Base tool turned around information a brand manager can use right now to make decisions. And it’s much more than just likes and dislikes. This view shows a filter by emotions and behavior for Wal-Mart. Lots of people express love, like, need and prefer, but more express hate, dislike, detest and even loathe. Click on the word and you drill down to the references. More importantly, you can find out that people depend on or stay away from your brand and instantly click to see why. Click for larger version To use a different example, here’s a view of a search for Prius. The only reason I really wanted to show it is for the headline of the second post in the listing of “Sound Bytes.” (Sorry. Just thought it was funny.) Click for larger version But let’s say you want to know what percentage of people like your brand and for what reasons. Jump over to the Insights and Themes analysis reports and you can see that, for Listerine, 51 percent of the online conversations around it (38,097 of them) show that people like the mouthwash because it kills germs. But 28 percent of people dig it because it kills toenail fungus. WHAT? And it’s apparently got some traction as a mosquito repellent. Click for larger version Frankly, I’d be some women would say it’s a female repellant, too, but that’s not based on research … per se. Not convinced? Filter the reports by preference and see that for the iPad, of people who prefer some other type of computing device, 28 percent would rather have a Kindle, 25 percent an iPhone, 23 percent a laptop and 16 percent a “netbook.” Click for larger version You can also see what you are preferred to. The big selling point here is that all this data is organized and easy to find in a matter of seconds after your search. Yes, it is prepared using automated scoring and computer analysis of human language, which I’ve complained about before . But Spier’s claims that six year of analyzing scientific research and development topics, academic and corporate reports and documents and so on have helped his team develop a more sophisticated, semantically driven and advanced analysis mechanism. They claim to have colloquialisms, slang, abbreviated spellings and misspellings down to a science. While I’m not skilled enough at analyzing computer code or applications to be able to assess the validity of the claims, when I saw the tool in action, I was convinced he was right. And then there’s the kicker: Price. A seat license is $250 per month and a five-pack of keywords costs $1,000 per month. The entry point for this tool, which is by far the most useful web-based market research tool I’ve seen to date, is just $1,250 per month. Keep in mind that one keyword is your brand, a single competitor is another, etc. But to monitor one brand, three competitors and a general one for your industry, you don’t have to break the bank. Some observations: Consumer Base is being offered as a “limited release.” To my knowledge, this means that the full scale of its functionality is not quite yet available to everyone, but what I described above is in the current offering, so it’s solid. The five consumer product goods companies that are using it are probably getting the full Alpha or Beta version of the software. If you sign up, you’re getting a good tool, but it will probably get a lot better soon. Because Consumer Base was built with direct input and feedback from market research professionals at CPG companies, it gives brand managers, market researchers, R&D groups and the like more of what they need out of market intelligence than companies who built tools assuming they know what marketers want. This means the aforementioned people are going to like it better, the reports are more meaningful and the usefulness of the data is more apparent While the tool is the closest thing you can get to easy-to-navigate and understand, full-scale market research in real time I’ve seen, you shouldn’t replace true, in-depth market research with it. But perhaps you can adjust the types of questions and information you search for in your annual research because this tool can answer a lot of the top-level questions you need answers to The less unique your company or brand name, the more time you will need to set up your searches. A search for “Bloomberg” is going to return information about the news organization, the Mayor of New York and so on. So if you share a name, spelling, etc., you’ll need some front-end time setting it up like any monitoring solution, but Consumer Base is as easy to set up as any I’ve seen. When you talk to Consumer Base about their solution, they’re going to throw out a term called “ Netnography .” I’m sure that will impress some people, but it’s just a scientific-sounding way to say, “we watch what consumers do online and report back.” It’s like online ethnography … they follow you around, watch you drink out of the milk carton, scratch your butt and so-on, then say, “This person is not a germaphobe.” It’s useful information, regardless of what they name the process. Consumer Base is not meant to be used as a social media monitoring solution. It’s not a “find conversations now and interact with people in the tool” answer like a Radian6 , Scout Labs , Sysomos or Alterian . For the on-the-ground monitoring and interaction, you’ll need a monitoring solution and process in addition to this. At some point, the pricing is going to have to change. This tool is far too valuable to stay that cheap. Spier and CMO Lisa Rosner even admitted as much and said the focus right now is to get people to use it, see what kind of value it can deliver and make the tool better. Expect some price adjustments down the road, but know that if it smells like a bait and switch, at least they’re being open with the premise that they may adjust prices down the road. Get in now and you might benefit from being an early adopter. Give Consumer Base a look-see. If you’re a medium-to-large marketer, market researcher or someone who needs good insights from your audiences regularly, this tool takes those expensive, quarterly reports and makes them cheaper with real-time access. And for those of you out there at social media measurement/monitoring or market research firms, or those of you who always place a skeptical eye on overwhelmingly positive reviews, I’m anxious for your feedback. But just know that I was skeptical too, until I saw the tool in action. It’s solid. The comments are yours.

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The business use of Twitter

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

I recently stumbled across this report by Edison , which looked into Twitter usage and general social media trends in North America. Among other interesting findings, one that stood out to me was the fact that despite  87% of people being aware of Twitter, only 7% used it. It’s right up there with Facebook for awareness, but is miniscule in actual use, compared to Facebookwhich had 41% usage. Despite Twitter growing in awareness in the public domain, largely thanks to high profile tweeters, it is still, comparatively, a small group of people that use it. I am unfortunately still viewed as a geek by by non-tweeting friends. But what got my attention was the fact that 51% of Twitter users said that they follow a brand or company, compared to just 16% for all social network users. The discrepancy between the percentage of people following brands on Twitter compared to Facebook is interesting and for me, raises the question of whether this is simply a fact that a ‘follow’ is seen as less committal than a Like on Facebook, or whether this points to the actual usage. Is Twitter seen more as the channel for reaching businesses? This is certainly encouraging for those businesses that are focusing their attention on Twitter and is obviously unwelcome news for those that focus their efforts elsewhere, predominantly Facebook. (Though I don’t think 16% should be sniffed at). So what is it about this medium that makes us more amenable to befriending companies? The immediacy of Twitter is probably one reason. I can quite confidently say that I have asked more questions to brands on Twitter than I ever have on Facebook, because I would expect to get an answer almost straight away. And it’s an easy process. I get a notification from Tweetdeck and my question is (hopefully) answered. With Facebook it’s not so smooth. Let’s also put this into context. A poll conducted last year, found that Twitter was the most important tool for brands to master, at 30%. Facebook came in at 26% and LinkedIn at 22%. And did I mention that this poll was conducted on LinkedIn?? So even in the context of business-related tools, Twitter is still coming up trumps. These findings perhaps mark a shift in the way that we use Twitter. So how do we use it? Well, according to the Edison survey, 42% answered that they use it to learn about procucts/services. Twitter as a business tool certainly makes sense, it’s always been the place I would share and seek industry news and the integration of LinkedIn and Twitter last year would support this. It would seem that as ever, we’re still not willing to mix business with pleasure, with Facebook being seen as the ’social’ platform hence why we’re so unwilling to follow brands on there. Even though Twitter may be seen as the tool for business, there are still wider findings to consider, around the businesses that are actually using these tools. Despite some excellent case studies and a clear appetite to communicate with brands, most small brands still aren’t using social media marketing. A whopping 81% according to a recent report by Citibank. Now this I find surprising. For all the talk of the accountants and business coaches setting up shop on Twitter, this shows that a large proportion of businesses still aren’t engaging in social media. A nice little reminder to take us out of our social media bubble. There is clearly still a lot of work to be done to raise the awareness of online marketing to businesses. These findings show how important social media is to an organisation, but that there is still a gap between the companies that are using these tools, compared to the willing audience that’s out there. Let’s keep filling it Possibly Related Posts: How Twitter Is Coming Of Age How To Integrate Twitter Feature @Anywhere In To Your Blog Or Website Charities And Social Media – The Return Of Twestival How To Vastly Improve Your Twitter Stream Twitter investing in search

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The business use of Twitter

Simply Zesty – The Story 1 Year On

Monday, May 10th, 2010

One year ago today Simply Zesty opened for business, and what a year it has been! Having enjoyed a couple of great posts from Contrast and Echo Libre chartering the first year of their companies we thought it would be a great idea to share some of the highlights of our first year in business here on our own blog as life and business can move too fast at times and it can be important to look back and see where you have come from rather than always looking forward. All that we can say is that although there have been a lot of ups and downs over the course of the year we never really thought we would come this far ourselves in just 365 days and we are blown away by the amount of support and the help that so many people have given us to get this far. There have been many sleepless nights, plenty of hard work, some tears, plenty of joy but most of all just a lot of relief to have taken the business this far. Here are some of the highlights from the last year… Starting Out We started out aiming to help the start up businesses who didn’t have huge marketing budgets and our mission statement was to “help businesses punch above their weight” using social media for marketing. Lauren was our first and only employee and she worked long hours for the first few months doing everything from pitches to looking after clients and cleaning the office, she was literally everywhere. We started the business with 10,000 Euros as seed capital and if ever there was a business that was bootstrapped this was it. We didn’t have any money for marketing ourselves or taking clients out to lunch so we spent a lot of our time in hotel lobbies pretending to be bigger than we actually were. When we spoke about the “office” to clients what they didn’t know was that it was Niall’s spare bedroom. We were lucky though that we were able to attract clients quickly and what we lacked in money we made up in working long hours to keep our clients happy and start to grow the business. Using Blog As A Marketing Tool As Co-Founders we were having a hard time getting the word out about the company. Neither of us really liked attending networking events as they all seemed to be full of accountants, business coaches and people from other agencies looking for business. We had tried everything and decided that we needed a new tact. On a warm sunny evening we went for a coffee and after a long chat decided that we would re-design our website to have the blog front and center and also agreed that we were going to do all our networking online through social media. From that day on we would each spend at least an hour per evening writing a blog post that offered real value to our readers and the blog would become the center of our universe in terms of marketing ourselves Getting Our Unique Style Wherever we go people always commend us on our unique style which to be honest has nothing to do with us but more to do with 2 very talented young individuals who we ended up working with because of Twitter and meeting them both there. The first is Phil O’Kane who we asked to take our photos because having followed his blog we both knew he was a good photographer. We told him that we wanted to get some “funky” photos with Dublin as the backdrop. Phil made us laugh and pose and what came out the other end were photos that made us look about 10 foot tall and had a unique style that we loved immediately. In a world where most companies use stock imagery on their sites they could not have been much more different and we loved them! We loved them so much that we decided to make them a key feature of our new website (god that is vain when we read it back!). Needing a new website we had a look around and found the uber talented Sean O’Grady who we gave the very loose brief of designing us something “clean and funky with the blog as front and center”. He came back with what is still today a site that we love and adore beyond belief. For somebody so young he got the brief spot on and delivered a site that lets the content do the talking. Hiring Sarah Sarah Kavanagh was our first member of staff, who joined us in July last year . Sarah has been an invaluable part of the team and has seen us grow to where we are now. Sarah started as an account exec, but now we’ve expanded and grown our client base, we’re pleased to be able to make the most of her incredible skills and have her in a full-time design role. Every company starting out needs a Sarah and we’re incredibly grateful for the hard work and long hours she has always put in. She was there at the very start of the company and has gone through a lot of the hard dark days at the start with us so it’s a delight that she can enjoy the good days with us now as we grow. Jon Snow And Mashable Our own blog was starting to get some good traction thanks to the amount of time we were spending on it and Lauren scored a couple of big wins in terms of raising the profile of the blog and company as a whole by recording an interview with well known channel 4 news anchor Jon Snow talking to him about social media and how it was starting to affect the news room. We were starting to do more and more guest posting to help promote our own blog with Lauren writing a great article on one of the world’s most popular blogs Mashable. Facebook Page We had been having an argument about getting our own Facebook page for a while and after a good bit of back and forward we decided to go with one. We were a social media agency so would have been expected to have one but on the flip side were only going to have a Facebook page if it was the best one we could possibly have. We went ahead and did it and to this day it is one of the best ways we have of communicating with people who like our brand. Signing Vodafone In September we were approached by Vodafone to help them with the launch of the 360. It was the first time Vodafone Ireland had included bloggers in a press launch and we were delighted to be involved. The launch seemed to go down pretty well too, with a great post from one of the country’s most respected journalists – Marie Boran . Shortly after this we moved onto a more day to day role with Vodafone helping with their overall social media strategy. Signing Vodafone in Ireland was a major move for us and we could really feel our little agency starting to grow up. Busy Birthday Month A busy birthday month! The two of us and Sarah Kavanagh all celebrate our birthdays in the same week in September, which means that when it rolls around, we get to eat a lot of cake! Twitter Lists Never ones to sit back and relax, we decided to have a bit of fun testing out Twitter’s new list function and attempted to ‘crowd source the world’. Our experiment to create a directory for Twitter users worldwide was a good bit of fun and also got us some invaluable coverage. Winter Camp There were conferences in Ireland pretty much every week covering social media but we wanted to do something that would really stand out and get people excited about the industry so we brought some of the best speakers from Ireland and UK together for a day of fun at the Simply Zesty Winter Camp… 75k Visitors To The Blog When we started focusing here on the blog we didn’t really have any specific traffic figures in place because we knew that it was more about the quality of reader that we were attracting but even we were blown away when the blog started to become so popular that it was getting over 75,000 visitors every single month after only 8 months of us really pushing it as our main marketing tool. We reckon that the blog is responsible for bringing in well over 80% of the business we attract but it also takes a lot of hard work with myself and Lauren often spending over 10 hours per week writing blog posts each. A Shiny New Home As our agency started to grow we knew it was time to move out of our pokey offices! We moved into our new office in Deerpark Road earlier this year and were determined to put a stamp on it. Some of our favourite features include the pingpong table, foam decorations courtesy of Made in Hollywood and the breakout corner, which, although pretty, rarely gets used! Traditional Media Even though it had been a great few months for SZ, we decided it was probably time to a bit of ‘traditional’ marketing, and subsequently found ourselves in the Independent . We receieved 3 or 4 leads off the back of this and we hugely recommend combining traditional PR with online. It really does work! New Staff In the past couple of months we’ve grown our little team pretty aggressively. We’ve got 2 outstanding account managers in Niall and Rob. Each bring different skills with them, but are equally passionate about social media and dedicated to doing great work for our clients. And we now have two new account executives – Tom Fox and Ciaran Treacy, who will be operating in client teams with Rob and Niall Fagan, as they start out with Simply Zesty. Some Amazing Clients Our bread and butter! We’re incredibly proud of the clients we have on-board and have a range of household brands and smaller names that we help through social media. Our client list includes Vodafone Ireland , Nokia , Universal Pictures , The Body Shop , Vodafone Foundation , Visit Dublin , Rehab Ireland and Kinvara Smoked Salmon . We’re pleased to have built up our client list in a year and believe this shows the power of social media and how many brands are using this as a way to reach their customers. Chief Organizer By our own admission we were not the most organized for the first year of being in business so it was time that we hired an accountant/office manager/chief organizer who came in the form of the lovely Sarah Rowlands. Getting Sarah on board means that we can focus on looking after clients and doing the sort of innovative work that has got us this far. It also means that we are in a much better place to manage our growth going forward and hire more great staff and take the business to the next level now that we have a sound platform to work from.Every office should have a Sarah to keep it ticking over smoothly. What’s Next? It’s been a fantastic first year and not even we can believe the position that we’re in, with a fantastic team of SZers and working on some exciting projects, courtesy of our clients. We are never ones to rest on our laurels and will continue to aim high and work hard. We only hope to keep growing our company, with the brightest talent that Ireland has to offer. The past year has shown us that you never know what’s around the corner and we’re excited to embark on the next year of life at Simply Zesty. Who knows what’s in store for us next, but you can bet we’ll let you know when we do! Possibly Related Posts: We’re hiring! How To Make Your About Us Page Stand Out Smart Minds And Traditional Media Coverage Run for ActionAid Ireland A stunning new Irish blog

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Simply Zesty – The Story 1 Year On

Twitter Marketing – Forget What You Think You Know – OfficialWire (press release)

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

Twitter Marketing – Forget What You Think You Know OfficialWire (press release) Many marketers think that the only way to venture into Twitter marketing is to spend endless hours searching and targeting, but that's just not the case … How To Buy Twitter Followers – The Easy Way To Rake In The Dough! OfficialWire (press release) Get More Twitter Followers – New Service Helps Companies OfficialWire (press release) New Social Media Marketing Services – Be A Business Bombshell OfficialWire (press release) OfficialWire (press release)