In a recent post, I talked about the campaign our San Diego advertising agency created for Pierce Education Properties. The results were so strong that our client recently asked us expand it–a request that made us flip cartwheels through the hallway.

The new creative work consisted of a renewal flyer for current residents, a kick-off leasing season print ad and two additional print ads based on previous creative. Last time, we focused on how living at Chandler Crossings or The Village at Bluegrass was “all about you.”

This time, our advertising team concentrated on all the extra perks you would get by renewing your lease or signing a new lease early.

We chose this direction because it’s an awesome deal that they are offering. And we realized most young adults would want the opportunity to save money. In college, things really are about you and no one likes to pay rent (actually, no one likes to pay rent at any age). And we played off the fact that for young people so many other things matter more: money for books, money to “pimp out” your apartment and money to help your “party fund.”

Makes me want to sign up for a space at Chandler Crossing.

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter is endlessly fascinating not only for its social and marketing implications but for all the ingenious applications people keep coming up with to make it more trackable, manageable and just plain fun. Here are a couple of tools we have been playing around with here at Bailey Gardiner.

With only 140 characters to get your message across, shortened URLs are essential for sharing links on Twitter while still having room for your post. We’ve been looking at two of the most popular – bit.ly and Su.pr.

bit.ly is the shortener that comes loaded on Tweetdeck and Seesmic. Once you sign up for a bit.ly account here, you can track how many people click the link you tweeted.  You can send the link and your Twitter post from your bit.ly homepage and it automatically adds the link to your “history” so you can see how many people click through.

To simplify this process you can add a Sidebar Bookmarklet from the bit.ly site to your toolbar (on a Mac you just drag it over. You PC people are on your own, sorry.) Then when you go to a site you want to share, you just click on the Sidebar link and it opens up on top of the page you want to send out with the URL already shortened and a box for you to write your tweet post. Easier than copying the URL, going to your bit.ly homepage and then pasting the link into the shortener.

If you mostly work from Tweetdeck you can add your API Key to your Tweetdeck Settings. Just click on this link at the bit.ly tools page and it walks you through it. It will then add your links sent from Tweetdeck to your bit.ly homepage history. Doesn’t appear that Seesmic has this feature yet.

Another bit.ly feature I have been playing with is the Preview Plugin for Firefox (see sample above). It expands bit.ly links on web pages so you can see the full title and info like how many people have clicked in the link, etc. before you decide to click through or not. This is a pretty cool Firefox extension. It works (most of the time) when looking at your followers page on Twitter too. Simplifies the screening process for following back.

Su.pr works in a similar manner to bit.ly. Sign up for your own account and then you can post tweets from your Su.pr dashboard and track click throughs. You can also add a Su.pr bookmark to your toolbar (like bit.ly) so that you can send out a Twitter post from a website you want to share rather than have to go to your dashboard.

Su.pr was developed by the folks at Stumbleupon with the help of Tim Ferris (yeah, he’s that 4-Hour Workweek guy. Still haven’t mastered that), so it has the added benefit of also sharing your links with your Stumbleupon account, simplifying the process a bit. You can read Tim’s early preview post about it here. Su.pr provides the following tools:

• schedule your posts
• see click-thoughs in real time
• see how many retweets you got
• track your click throughs on Stumbleupon
• track your most popular
• learn the best time to post a Tweet based on your click through history (really like this feature)

I think both shorteners offer great tools to help us learn about our followers, particularly what they like and don’t like. You can’t go wrong with either, but they each have their strengths. bit.ly is ubiquitous so if you just rely on it, all your data is in one spot. However, I do think I have reached more people with Su.pr because of the added Stumbleupon feature. I wouldn’t necessarily take the time to Stumble every link I send out, but according to my Su.pr stats I have had more than 15K stumbles in just a month of usage. That’s a lot of potential eyeballs.

What, if anything, are you using? What do you like or dislike about it?

Word on twitter is that Interbike’s attendance was up 8 percent this year. A clear triumph for an event that nearly everyone was concerned would fall flat. We attended the bicycling conference to meet with marketing directors at several different companies, all of whom seemed very optimistic for 2010. While it was clear that 2009 has been a challenging year, we were relieved to find that many bicycling businesses are examining their current programs and looking for new strategies to implement in the upcoming year.

Historically, bicycle enthusiast marketing has dominated the business. You can see this reflected in company websites that only run news releases on how their sponsored athletes are faring in competitions–cyclocross, tris, road racing, mountain bike downhill. You name it. But for consumers who think Zabriskie and Zirbel sound like sleeping aids, this specialized bicycling tech talk is scary. And that has played a part in keeping America a country full of spandex clad riders, rather than a country of two-wheeled lifestyle commuters.

But after many conversations at Interbike, we are beginning to see a desire to shift toward a more inclusive marketing program to build a relationship with the general consumer, which we believe will help many companies expand their customer base, and ultimately, boost their business.

Here are a few bicycling marketing trends that are beginning to unfold (and that we can’t wait to lead):

1) Online advertising – We couldn’t be happier to hear the bicycling industry talk about pursuing online advertising. Not only is this a cost-effective way to spend one’s marketing dollars, it’s measurable and targeted. We enjoyed watching marketing directors dream of the possibilities as we explained how far online advertising has come. We are no longer talking about pay-per-click campaigns, but rather strategic use of retargeting, behavioral and contextual advertising models that reach very defined audiences.

2) Online sales – Shopatron is the new secret weapon, that’s not-so-secret anymore. Companies are still experimenting with how to best service the customer using this online sales system, but the transition is in place. A perfect complement to an online advertising program and also a necessity in today’s world of Internet shoppers.

3) Social media marketing strategy – What a change from last year! In 2008, we sat in on a seminar about social media and watched hundreds of confused faces. This year, Twitter and Facebook swamped Interbike. And as we talked with marketing directors, the conversation is switching from “what is twitter?” to “How do I strategically implement a social media marketing campaign?” We love social media marketing, and we can’t wait to create smart campaigns for the cycling community.

4) Lifestyle products and marketing – It’s about time because I’m getting tired of wearing spandex to client meetings! Not only do these new products give a public relations firm that specializes in consumer products more to work with, but it also gives a bicycle commuter so many more options. As I convince my coworkers to take on the pedal-powered commute, I like to offer them products that make cycling, shall we say, more hip. And after Interbike, I’m full of new product recommendations to help make the bicycle commute a reality: A Dahon for those living in small beachfront condos. A Nutcase helmet for those needing a colorful brain saver. Add in Keen’s Springwater cycling shoe (and just because we love Keen, an Alameda 15 labtop messenger bag) and put on a Shebeest NY Capri. Commuter heaven!

Did you notice any other trends at Interbike?

Fall may mean a lot of different things to different people.  But one thing we can all agree that fall brings is: FOOTBALL SEASON! Whether you enjoy football for the guts and glory, the socializing and snacks or simply to see the innovative advertising (like our creatives do), there’s a certain magic that comes with the competition of the game.  And at this San Diego public relations firm,  we see it as the perfect opportunity to maximize and capitalize on that competitive nature.

With the success of last season’s Buzztime social media contest, we decided to kick off (pun intended) the football season in the same manner.  Buzztime’s Commissioner Challenge will utilize football aficionados  who are MVP’s in the social media world.

Before earning the title, “The Commish” and being awarded with a $500 gift certificate to StubHub, the top four contestants in the country will compete and acquire points based on Buzztime’s scoreboard. Commissioners will be chosen based upon their own playbook detailing how they will use their networks on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere to gather their friends and head to their favorite Buzztime venue for a Wednesday night Fantasy Football draft.

Merging interactive entertainment, social media, and live football, Buzztime’s innovative competition is at the forefront of  social media marketing.  Details on how and where to submit can be found here.   Now if you know of someone that fits the bill, be sure to mention that they have until October 9 to submit their playbook.

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of working with Pierce Education Properties to launch a comprehensive social media program for three off-campus housing properties at Michigan State University. The goal of the program was to reach the college student residents in a way that would resonate, while also increasing the company’s SEO and showing off the Chandler Crossings properties’ unique personalities. We created a blog, Facebook fan page, Myspace, Flickr and YouTube, and worked extensively with the team on best practices, resources and guidelines for each.

The program was a huge success. All of the initiatives worked together to raise awareness about the property and in conjunction with the new advertising, helped to brand Chandler Crossings as a cool place to live. While every aspect played a role in the success of the program, the two stand-outs were the blog and the Facebook fan page. The Lounge blog is unlike anything already existing in East Lansing. It’s full of great content geared at MSU students, including: MSU sports, events around town, great recipes for cheap, studying tips and tips about apartment living. The bloggers are student age employees who are able to speak on these topics with ease and by using a fun and casual tone. Best of all, they have utilized our search engine optimization tips, and the blog now ranks on the first page of google for the search term MSU apartments. (A feat that no other apartment complex in the area has been able to accomplish due to the plethora of apartment review sites.)

The Chandler Crossings Facebook fan page now has 702 fans and a fantastic amount of engagement. Some may question, why would anyone want to become a fan of an apartment complex? Well, we asked ourselves that exact question and came up with some answers that we thought might just be effective. It appears that more than 700 people agree with us.

Along the way, while we created and implemented this social media program, we learned some great lessons, which we’ve have already incorporated with new clients. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Plans change - especially in social media. Everything’s moving fast, new tools are coming out all the time and some initiatives are just more effective than others. Because of this, make a plan but make sure you’ve made room for adjustments.

2. When training, go slow and use pictures. Could be true for most anything, but especially when you are dealing with a social media program. It’s easy to slip into social media jargon or assume people know what you mean when you are referring to a certain site, but I have found that everyone feels much more comfortable if they have something visual to look at.

3. Not every aspect of your social media program is going to be a home run. For Pierce, Myspace  was not such a hit. At first, we weren’t going to do anything with Myspace at all, but then the team decided to create a profile after hearing from the client that many of their residents still use Myspace. While this may be true, we struggled at reaching those residents with our profile, especially as more and more people abandon Myspace for Facebook. That being said, if the 72 friends that Chandler Crossings has on Myspace are looking for a way to connect, why shouldn’t we be there? (Quick poll, who here still actively uses their Myspace profile? If so, why?)

4. Measurement is best done starting from the beginning. It’s easy to overlook measurement when you are just starting out because there is so much to do, and not a lot to measure right away. However a definitive reporting system will help you in the long term to see exactly where you stand as far as engagement, SEO and consistency.

and 5. You are going to need a team. It’s virtually impossible to launch a comprehensive social media program if your client only has one person to implement it. One of the reasons Pierce’s blog has been so successful is that we have utilized and trained many of their employees to be bloggers. This way there are always enough people to keep blog content fresh, while others run Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, and Flickr.

How about you? All you social media marketers – any other good lessons you’ve learned along the way?

So you make bicycles, or the cool stuff that goes along with them, and you want to increase exposure for your products -  and ultimately sell more units – using social media.  As you prepare to put your best foot forward at Interbike, here’s 5 basic tactics aimed at helping you increase brand awareness, trial and sales using social media as the driver.

#1  Listen

Before you embark on any kind of social media program, it’s vitally important that you know what is being said about your brand – the good, the bad and the ugly.  Good thing is, the bike community is a lively bunch and pretty open about sharing their opinions (ha!), so there’s probably plenty to hear about what people think.  Once you have an idea of what is being said, you can develop a strategy for how to jump into the conversation.  If there’s a lot of negative chat, the last thing you want to do is begin a social media program that is oblivious to this fact or you will get slammed. In an ugly way. On the other hand, if your products are wearing halos right now, good to know that too so you can take advantage of the love.

Watch and listen how Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other tools behave, and how your competitors (or other product categories you admire) are using the different platforms. You’ll learn a great deal about how you can use them for your own brand domination plot.

#2  Develop A Strategy Before You Jump In

The biggest mistake I see companies make in social media is that they dive into using the tools before they have developed a strategy – and it shows. If you take nothing else away from this blog entry, please let it be this:  YOU MUST HAVE A STRATEGY. Social media is just like any other marketing program, and it requires strategic planning and direction to be successful. You must define the reasons why you are using social media in the first place.  Is it for brand awareness and sales? Reputation management? Customer service? Thought leadership? Issues advocacy? Extension of PR?  All of the above?  You would never embark on any of these programs without a carefully crafted plan of action.

If you don’t, you may end up with a Facebook page that has 90 fans. Dismal and embarrassing. Or worse yet, a Twitter stream with thousands of followers and none of them your core audience. Waste of time.

#3  Define Your Brand Voice

Everybody has one, whether you know it or not.  The question is, who’s gonna drive this boat?  Marketing?  Product Development? The enthusiasts themselves?  There’s not a wrong answer here, just more questions.

Since social media is all about authenticity, your need to create an honest bond between your marketing efforts and your customers.  If that customers are telling you they want more hardcore information about product enhancements and capabilities, well then you know Product Development is best equipped to be that information source.  Is your audience asking for more general information about how they can enjoy your product more in their lives, like ride routes and fun interactions? That’s a cue that marketing will have good information for that discussion.

#4  Build a Community

Once all this is figured out, THEN you can start to build out your communications platforms.  For most marketers in the bicycle industry, there’s going to be some natural selections:

• Blog – Easiest way to engage with your existing and potential customers through regular updates and interesting news.
• Facebook – Great way to build an online fan base of engaged and excited participants.
• Twitter - An online conversation in real time, this allows you to talk with people who are interested in you and your brand.
• YouTube – Powerful way to show your products in action through the second most popular search engine on the web (behind google).
• Flickr – Photo sharing can be a great way to engage enthusiasts and casual users in showing themselves with your products.
• LinkedIn – May be good if you are trying to build a business and sales network.
• There are dozens more depending on your goals and strategic plans.

All these platforms engage with users in different ways, and your strategy should be focused on how to repurpose your content to be unique for each platform.  I know, sounds time consuming, but after awhile it becomes almost second nature.

#5  Interact With Your Fans

Just remember, it’s a conversation, not a monologue.  Nobody loves a know-it-all chatterbox, and that goes the same in social media platforms.  You must devise a strategy to interact with your fans – that means a two-way conversation that engages them in dialogue with you about your company, your mutual love of bikes, your shared interests in other areas, and even random shit that has no relationship to anything other than you think it’s cool and wanted to share it.  This is what forms a relationship, and these are the things your social media program should employ to build your fan base — and keep them coming back for more.

And maybe, just maybe, Paris can become part of your fan base too.

Last night was a big one for Bailey Gardiner.  It was the Oscars of San Diego Public Relations, if you will, the 2009 PRSA Bernays Awards.  Sitting amongst some of San Diego’s most celebrated Public Relations professionals, the team was honored to take home four prestigious awards and one chart-topping achievement for the company’s COO.

Indra Gardiner Bowers was awarded one of four special awards, the Eva Irving Award for Community Service, and well deserved it was.  Indra is currently Vice Chair of the National Conflict Resolution Center.  She’s the Vice President of Sushi, A Center for the Urban Arts, but prior to this, she’s sat on countless boards, countless committees and raised countless dollars for social good.  She’s a giver in its truest form and an inspiration to any leader. I won’t go on and on, because Jon just did in a recent post about Indra (and rightfully so) when she was honored as a nominee at San Diego Magazine’s Women Who Move the City on Wednesday.  It’s been a busy week for Indra.  Then again, what week isn’t?

It’s the leadership at Bailey Gardiner, like Indra’s, that led the company to win hard-earned awards.  Last night, BG took home four:

In the Bronze category of Media Relations, Consumer Products, BG’s work for Se San Diego took home the Excellence Award for a hotel launch that filled the clip books with national placements that make any hospitality Public Relations Pro drool.

For the company’s work with Seaport Village, BG was awarded a Bronze category Merit Award for a feature story placed on the front page of the LA Times Arts section about the art of street performing, coinciding with the annual Seaport Village Spring Busker Festival.

For promoting reputation and brand management, Bailey Gardiner was awarded the Silver category Excellence Award for its work with the San Diego Association of REALTORS®.  The team successfully promoted association President, Erik Weichelt as an expert in the real estate industry and SDAR as the leading association in the area.

Now pat yourself on the back, you’re a wise one, reading an award-winning blog.  www.dontdrinkthekoolaidblog.com was awarded the Award of Excellence in the Bronze Blog category for its effective and creative inception and continued content.

Congratulations to our award-winning clients, to the Bailey Gardiner team and to the San Diego chapter of PRSA.  In the world of Public Relations, there was much to celebrate last night.

As co-leader of one of San Diego’s most creative PR, advertising and interactive agencies, Indra Gardiner deserves to be honored (if I do say so myself).  And San Diego Magazine agrees – at their annual Women Who Move the City event last night, Indra was honored as a nominee for her outstanding work both in the office and in the community.

She shared the spotlight with some pretty amazing women, all of whom have made a huge difference in our communities and are leading others to do the same.  We were especially moved by the story of Lori Sorbo, a survivor of multiple cancers and treatments, who told her personal story of survival and perseverance.  After her emotional speech, event emcee Monique Marvez called on the audience to help raise funds for the Susan G. Komen Foundation – we all got out our checkbooks and hope you will too.

But back to our star, Indra. Over the past several years, Indra has served on more than a dozen boards of non-profit organizations, and is currently Vice Chair of the National Conflict Resolution Center and Vice President of the Board for Sushi, A Center for the Urban Arts.  Her dedication to both these organizations is steadfast, and we witness her contributions at the agency regularly as she hosts meetings, directs staff programs, and leads board discussions on various topics. Plus, there’s a fire or two to put out now and then (ahem).

Not only that, Indra is a recognized leader on the national PR front, leading discussion groups and seminars for the Public Relations Society of America’s Counselors Academy, as well as Chair of Program Development for Pinnacle Worldwide, a consortium of independently owned agencies of which Bailey Gardiner is a member.

Indra rocks the house at home too. She and her husband Paul Bowers are fantastic parents to their cool son Jesse, who will probably grow up to solve the puzzle of cold fusion, bring about world peace, and entertain the masses with inspirational and eclectic performance art.

Plus, Indra bakes a mean blueberry crumble — what’s not to love?  We’re just glad San Diego Magazine agrees.  Indra really does move the city.

We’re the PR firm for Electra Bicycle Company. You might know that by now. Two weeks ago, we wrote about how doing PR for a consumer product is pretty much dictated by a magazine’s schedule, but if you’re wondering what else it takes to market a bicycle brand, here’s a peek at what else it entails:

• Following news and current events – Rising gas prices, holidays and even things like the winter thaw are important to us.

• Paying attention to several industries – These include fitness, fashion and the bicycling industry – all which have their own cycle. For example, we’re in the middle of Spring Fashion Week right now. Next week, it’s off to Interbike where Electra will debut its new Ticino line. We’ve placed Electra in everything from Fitness and Style.com to Bicycle Retailer.

• Knowing your audience – We use different communication styles for sales reps, bike dealers, consumers and media. Different levels of bike language, if you may.

• Being on celebrity watch – One of my favorite parts. Electra bikes are loved by celebrities. Recent celebs seen with Electras include Queen Latifah and Kelly Osbourne. An Electra Amsterdam was included as one of Ivanka Trump’s favorite things for fall. We have our sources, but we also stay on top of celebrity news.

• Reading everything – We’ve said this before, but I can’t stress how important it is for PR professionals to know the publications they’re pitching. Bicycle Retailer has become my Bible for the bicycle industry, and I also keep up with publications and blogs like W, Us Weekly, Shape, Men’s Health, BikeRumor.com, and more.

Call us crazy, but we love bikes and we love what we do.

Ok, you get it. Social Media is the way things are headed, and you’ve gotten top brass to sign off on an initial strategy to get your brand out there as part of the conversation. You’re feeling good and excited to get started.

I hate to be the wet towel, but there’s a big difference between willingness and preparedness, when it comes to getting social. So many brands are taking tentative steps into the world of social media marketing, but many are scalding their feet when they realize that they aren’t staffed or prepared to cope with the inevitable influx of responses to their opening gambits.

The following are a few tips to make sure you have a good foundation in place to set your social media strategy up for success:

Take a good, hard look at your website
Any social media strategy worth its salt will generate a lot of interest around your brand, and therefore drive visits to your company’s website. But guess what? If your website isn’t up to scratch, you’re not only disappointing the people who took the time to engage with you, but missing out on the huge boost in traffic that can be generated via these channels. Specific things to look out for:

• Is it easy to subscribe via email?
• Do you have robust web analytics in place to track where people go in your site, after arriving from a social media platform?
• Are you collecting actionable data from these visitors, and are you prepared to incorporate observations from these visitors’ interactions in the social space into what you already know about them?
• Can people interact with you on your website as much as they can on social media platforms?

Make sure your infrastructure is in place
Ok, great, you’ve gotten your Facebook page up, and your Twitter account is spitting out tweets like there’s no tomorrow. Who is responding to your followers’ DMs? Who is responsible for keeping the Flickr stream updated? Who’s going to watch the Fan page for negative comments? Please don’t say your intern…

• Are you staffed for a responsive and regularly updated social media presence?
• Have you clearly outlined internal responsibilities and expectations for managing your brand’s social media presence across all platforms?
• Have you established a process for maintaining a consistent brand experience across multiple social media platforms, to prevent your Twitter guy saying something different from your Facebook gal?
• What’s your crisis plan for when one of your employees sticks a customer’s cheese pizza up their nose, and posts the video to YouTube?

Get ready for the long haul
We’ve already talked about there being no turning back once you open up your brand to the conversation, but this has huge ramifications for your marketing operations in the long run.
•    Are you writing social media maintenance responsibilities into your job descriptions for hiring purposes?
•    Are you offering training resources to employees who are now taking on these additional responsibilities?
•    How are you monitoring, tracking and evaluating your employees’ work-related social media interactions?
•    If you’re using a spokesperson as the frontman for your brand, think long and hard about this one: what happens when/if they leave the company? Have a plan in your back pocket for this scenario.
•    As an alternate take to the spokesperson situation, how can you help this person cope with the sheer volume of customer questions and interactions that can be generated by putting them out there as the face of your brand?

What do you think? Are there any other items that should be in place as the foundation of your social media strategy? Let us know in the comments!