• Each “fan” or “friend” generates about $174.17 for that brand.
• The number represents a 28 percent increase compared to 2010.
• Fans spent $116 on the brand company per year than nonfans
• Fans spent 43 percent money within that brands industry than non-fans as well.

The study, conducted by Social intelligence company Syncapse (You can read the release here), followed the habits 2000 Facebook users who had “Liked” or “friended” a brand. Without getting into the methodology too much, coming  up with a number like this requires that several traditional and social media marketing matrices need to be evaluated, including:

• Product spending
• Loyalty
• Page recommendations
• Media value acquisition cost
• Brand affinity

While 175 bucks is nothing to sneeze at, I think it might be worth considering that brands they followed, and the price points of their products. If this was a homogenous group of, let say, consumer candy brands, for example, with a price point around a dollar per unit…then selling 175 more Snickers per person makes a difference.   The graphic below from Syncapse shows what a friend means to some more premium brands.

Friends More Valuable than Followers

It is also interesting to note the high value of a Facebook “fan” as compared to a Twitter “follower”.  Research from 2012 shows that even a Facebook “Share” is worth more, at about  $14 per share. While a “re-tweeted” message on Twitter only brings in $5. A “Like” on Facebook is also worth more:$8, compared to only $2 generated by Twitter “follow.”

Source: http://imbuemarketing.com/2012/the-value-of-a-social-following-infographic/

Part of this is likely due to the fact that becoming a fan on Facebook requires each individual user name have an actual/real email address, while Twitter followers can now be create mechanically and are notoriously less likely to be real people (see part II here)

The “Super Consumer’s” Bully Pulpit

It should come as no surprise that Facebook users who take the time to “friend” or “fan” a brand page are more likely than those who don’t to spend money on those products. With social media, these vocal “super-consumers” now have a pulpit from which they can evangelize their love for your brand.  Super consumers are generally defined the 10% of your customers who will account for more than 50% of your profits.

While these are the same types of consumers who are most likely to react positively to your brand in a non- social media setting, brand managers need to keep in mind that social media is a two-way street;.These same users are equally likely to share any bad experiences that they have as well. This is somewhat contradictory to some previously held beliefs about social media champions. But the question remains, which came first, the Facebook page, or the Super-consumer? And how has the social interaction affected their buying habits.

Either way, super consumers tend to shape how brands see themselves and are harbingers for tracking brand marketing efforts and buying habits. By monitoring their online response and directing campaigns to them, you can increase your marketing efficiency to your core profit-center, as well as get a solid sampling of how your consumer audience at-large will respond to your marketing efforts.

Again, all this is assuming that these are real friends and followers. There is a thriving black market for followers and friends and everyone from leading brands, to politicians and celebrities is buying in. This is the topic of Part II.

These numbers don’t take into take account the recent trend of buying fake (or at the very least, dubious) followers, particularly on Twitter. This dirty little secret became somewhat known in the mainstream during the 2012 election when reporters uncovered that Mitt Romney’s rather paltry Twitter feed gained 117,000 followers overnight in July 2013. During the same election cycle, a previously unknown Democratic congressional candidate in Rhode Island, (Anthony Gemma) jumped into the race with 937,000 followers. Pretty impressive considering only half that many people live in his district at all. The incumbent he was running against had 3,500 followers.

And while neither candidate’s social media boon helped them win, plenty of successful people have fake followers as well. Estimates say that Barack Obama (42% of 29 Million), Bill Gates (50% of 10 million) and even Twitter CEO Dick Costelo (32% of his 1 million) have legions of fake followers.(Note: Do you know how hard it is to find pictures of an angry Pete Cashmore or Justin Timberlake? Must say something about their quality of life)

The Street Value of a Follower

Recent research indicates that shows that going rate on the “street” for a follower is about 18 cents.  So 1,000 new fake followers will cost you around $18.00 (according to Barracuda Labs). The cost to get “High End” followers can range up to $30 each. How does one become high end? You follow other people and get followers yourself. (You can read more about how these fake personas are created in a great article here… http://t.co/cI10Euo3rz ).

Even retweets can be bought now. The price range for five retweets a day can range from $9 per month to about $150 a month for 125 daily retweets.  It is rumored that celebrities with major Twitter juice, such as Kim Kardashian, are paid as much as 10k for one retweet. Although its estimated that 43% of her 7.5 million followers are fake (ED: one could argue the validity of any of her follower, but that’s another blog.)

According a recent NY Times article (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/fake-twitter-followers-becomes-multimillion-dollar-business/) Twitter is much easier to fake friends because it Facebook requires that users use a real e-mail address, while Twitter does not. Instead, Twitter requires users to enter Captchas (those funny words that look like your doctor wrote them with his left hand) if they are trying to create multiple accounts from the same I.P. address. But like anything  of value, smart people have figured out a way to get around this.  The Times cited one follower “reseller” who had written software that could create up to 100,000 new accounts in five days. Moreover, in countries where labor is cheap and the labor pool is deep, people can be paid to type them in, in real time, for as little as a penny per Captcha.

Selling and reselling these followers (infinitely) at 18 cents apiece poses a significant upside and is reason enough to question any # of followers before you invest.

So these are your 2013 Saltwater Finfish Regs (as of 4/22/13.) Feel free to print this out a copy for your boat or tackle box.

[Click the image to download a printable  .PDF]

Disclaimer: Regulations change frequently. I took these from the MA Division of Marine Fisheries site as of 4/25/13.

Please consult http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/dmf/recreationalfishing/rec_index.htm if you have any questions about what you can or cannont keep  (in other words, I dont think this will hold up in court if you get pulled over by the Environmental police.)

Article 1

Article 2

At Bluefish we’ve been fortunate that the sites that we build and host have escaped some of the recent, large scale attacks. Are we lucky or careful? Well, probably a little of both. Many of the recent attacks have been directed toward WordPress sites in particular, the CMS that we use as a solution for many clients – especially small business clients for whom it’s a great, affordable solution.

What makes you a target?

What makes for a good hacking victim? The simple answer is “opportunity.” Unless you’re hiding government secrets, or poking fun at the hacking community, no one probably has a good reason hack you. So the science (or perhaps psychology) of  becoming a being a victim of a hack is really pretty simple – a large enough group to justify the effort combined with the relative ease of finding and exploiting vulnerabilities. As WordPress grows in popularity (see below), it is becoming a victim of its own success. Its ease of use and open source technology is driving more and more users to it every day. As such, it is starting to meet the first obvious criteria for becoming a hacking target – market size.

• http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all)
• http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/29/wordpress-cms-crown-drupal-joomla/
• http://www.uk2.net/blog/drupal-wordpress-joomla-comparison/
• http://trends.builtwith.com/cms

Additionally, its ease of use allows lots of people to quickly and easily get a website online with very little technical know how. So now you have the second criteria being met for a hacking target – lots of sites that were built by novices. Novices, by nature don’t have lots of experience building and maintaining their sites, and may not be utilizing some of the best practices for securing their site.

All that being said, there is almost no sure fire way to prevent your website from getting hacked, and an article like this is almost sure to invoke “Murphy’s Law” and ask for trouble. However, we can continue to build and maintain our sites carefully and use reasonable caution with our websites.

What Can I Do?

What do we do you ask? We take a handful of simple steps with our sites, sometimes more for clients with higher security needs, but the following list is our general checklist of things we do for every website we built and host – especially our WordPress sites:

1. Username: Do not use the default “admin” username that WordPress assigns upon installation. By doing so, you’re giving a hacker 50% better chance of getting in using a brute force password attack.
2. Password: Do use a randomly generated password. Just google it and you’ll find tons of free sites to help you. You really want it strong, include special characters, upper and lower case, the whole thing. Don’t worry if you’re not going to remember it. Copy it and paste it somewhere safe on your computer.
3. Security utilities and plugins: Due to its great user community, WordPress has several very good security enhancements that will go a long way towards a more secure website.
4. Keep everything up to date: This can’t be overstated enough. WordPress (  and all the plugins and tools we use to build sites) are open source and built by the WordPress community. Security holes are found, the developers fix them and submit and update to patch the hole.
5. Get to know your Admin area: You, however, won’t know this unless you are in your admin area on a regular basis checking for updates. Check for available updates both to the WordPress core code as well as updates to any of the third-party plugin tools that may be installed. We have seen clients who chose to host and manage their own site fall victim to a hack because they were not keeping the software and patches up to date.
6. Run malware scans: When someone gains access to your site, they can do bad things and use your site for more bad things. Run regular scans on your site. These guys can help you understand what you should be doing. We use their service.
7. Back up your data: Last and not least is to run backups. All Content Management Systems, WordPress included, are built with a database. This is of course why they’re so powerful and useful but also their greatest vulnerability. So, back up your files (php, html, etc.) and your database files. Don’t know what I’m talking about? You probably need to consult with someone who does.

All of this might seem like a lot, and to some people the time and energy it takes to keep their website up and running is more than then want to do. But consider the value of keeping your site up, running, and safe –  and it doesn’t seem like as much of a chore.

Your other option, of course, is to have someone like us do all of this for you. Many of our clients chose this option for just that reason.

At Bluefish, we check our clients’ sites at least once a weekly; we run malware scans, perform software updates and we back everything up. Then we store it all at a separate location for safe keeping.We also try to use good, strong passwords for every single site we build.

If you’d like to learn more about how to keep your site safe, or would like to talk to us about how we might be able to help take some of this burden off your already stressed out staff, send us an email at ideas@bluefish-digital.com

My point was that content is  an important part of a good digital marketing strategy and has been for a long time. For years it lived in the realm of PR, often in the guise of thought leadership – by-lined articles, white papers and case studies (I’ve ghost written 100′s of pieces like this for everyone from Chief Surgeons at major hospitals to CEO and Engineers.)

Or else it was part of the sales cycle, as either a fulfillment piece (“Sign up and receive our free report”) or as part of the buyer education process for products or services with long sales cycles. Tech companies frequently take this approach (I used to produce a steady stream of these types of pieces for CA.)

For a small business,  content marketing can take the form of blogs, newsletters and even social media. While it is still an important part of the sales cycle, two major factors have things have changed.

1) The importance as an SEO tool, and;

2) The form factor that content takes.

Content Marketing and SEO

Content is crucial as a marketing tool for SEO reasons. Google loves fresh content. (They didn’t scan all those books for nothing) Our site consistently ranks top 3 for “Digital Marketing Boston” (even with all the big agencies in town) because we are regularly updating the site with content that is relevant and (apparently) interesting .

Customers you never knew existed can now find you based on how well your content is presented and its quality.  Using social media tools such as teasers with links back to your website on Twitter and LinkedIn are great ways to promote the site and capitalize on the SEO worthiness of your content.

Content in All Forms

Some “older” people like myself (I’m celebrating the 21st birthday of my 21st birthday this month) often think of content in the form of the written word -Newsletters, whitepapers, blogs, etc. all require writing. But what is most interesting about the content revolution is that video, and audio (think podcasts) are the fastest growing and often most effective way to reach consumers across many categories.

A very smart partner of mine once told me that YouTube was the second largest search engine behind Google. Millenialist turn to YouTube almost as much as anything else when they want answers. It makes sense that a generation raised on Digital Cable and the Web would interact better with videos than the written word.

The Challenge is Time

The biggest challenge to SMB’s when it comes to using content is time. They just don’t have time to be blogging or writing. But there are ways around that.

• You can become a content aggregator  and use tools like RSS feeds or Buzzfeed.
• You can outsource to someone like, oh…Bluefish.
• You can purchase and re purpose content from either trade associations, or someone like Article Factory.

Either way, the saying that content is King is very true. But it’s certainly not a new concept.

The first and only volume of the Hodnett Hawk. February 8, 1978.

…So, from the mouths of babes come 7 tips for better blogging and digital marketing.

1) Good typography is still important: By using ALL CAPS for the masthead, your eye is immediately drawn to it. This was my first introduction to the hierarchy of text (and I probably just didn’t know how to turn the caps lock off.)

2) Branding is important: The alliterative branding of the “Hodnett Hawk” was important for me to one day be able to sell the company to a giant media conglomerate one day. I would have gone with the Hodnett Herald but that would have created brand confusion with the Boston Herald.

 3) Never bury the lede:  Perhaps because I was shut in, I chose to use “Stuck at home” as the headline and push the part about “Many Accidents,” and even “People were killed” down further into the story. That would never cut it in a newsroom today.

4) Stay focused on people:  The good thing I did was that I didn’t focus the story on the science of the storm, or about how it looks. It’s about how it is affecting people. Once when I was pitching a story for Stanley Tool Company I had an editor tell me “hammers don’t buy magazines…people buy magazines.” A lesson I still try to follow.

 5) Use headlines that draw pictures:  “Snow, it Fell and fell and fell.” Admit it, you can picture yourself looking up and seeing snow falling on you, can’t you? Are you trying to catch a snowflake on you lounge?

6) Mistakes can be distracting: I didn’t know how to use the white out back then, so I just erased a whole sentence with a pencil. Mistakes hurt the over-all presentation and it’s something I have to constantly remind myself.

7) People love tips and tricks: The “Hints” section that would have been a perfect place to sell ad space for bottled water (rather than filling up your bath-tub.) It’s still one of the best ways to drive traffic on a blog (see what I did there?)

The Hodnett Hawk – Feb 8 1978

With desktop publishing and blogging tools still about three decades away, I also had to create my own newspaper – The Hodnett Hawk (Circulation: 3) from two pieces of glued together notebook paper.

My mom had enough sense of humor to tuck it away and passed it along to me when I moved out after college. It has  been sitting in a trunk for about 20 years until I uncovered it during a recent move.

This is pretty similar to what my Mom had for a typewriter

Granted, it seems like first graders today are developing mobile apps in HTML 5, but when I was 7, we didn’t exactly have the same technology. Therefore, after being trapped inside for what seemed like 4 months, I took to the 1940’s-era typewriter that my mom kept (and still regularly used) in her sewing room to produce the masterpiece you see above.

Lean too far toward getting stuff done, and you’re a commodity day laborer. Go too far to the creative side and you become those “fluffy artsy guys” who are useless in the minds of many of your clients. (Please note, that I realize that I’m using innovation and creativity here interchangeably. Im grouping them into the bucket that my CPA would call “thinking” rather than “doing.”)

Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO of adobe posted a blog yesterday that indicates that our obsession to data is what’s killing off our creativity.

“We know more, we do more, we’re more connected. We have real-time access to content and information we never could have imagined, said Narayen. “And yet, I’m concerned that lost in this rising tide of data is the essence of what makes us human: Creativity. It goes far beyond the traditional world of art and music. Creativity is the essence of invention and inspiration, and it is what fuels our economy.”

A study conducted by Adobe shows that 8 out of 10 people think that creativity is the key to driving economic growth, but that same study indicates that only 1 out of 4 people believe they are reaching their creative potential.  80% think they know the answer, but only 25% are striving for it? Seems crazy, but it the truth.

Narayen goes on to talk about how our educational system lacks the proper structure to encourage us to think creatively.  But the bigger point is that productivity…the act of actually getting things done…is what is trumping creativity.

Results vs Art?

While we focus on hard numbers and ROI, the vivid imaginations we had as kids –  the one that seamlessly transformed old blankets and boxes into spectacular palaces worthy of the knights and princesses we were – are left to atrophy.

This is not to say that we want to just make art for art’s sake. We are not in that business, and neither are our clients. However, when you look to commercially successful people who consistently deliver creatively, you find that they are constantly moving, constantly striving and constantly looking to build on their success and take their  ideas forward.

The folks at Walt Disney have said, “Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious…and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

The “gift” of creativity –  whether you are an animator or data base admin – has to be nurtured, perused, chased down, beaten up and then forced into submission.

It is a random example, but I feel like the perfect blend of these two elements can be found in  Harvey Keitel’s character, Winston Wolf, from Quentin Tarrintio’s 1994 classic film, Pulp Fiction.  Wolf is the man who gets things done, but he does it with style.

The Wolf is not above hosing blood and brain fragments off two murdering thugs, or patching a beat up car with blankets. But when he does it, he’s just arrived in his Acura NSX (turst me, it was an extremely cool car at the time) and he does it in a tuxedo. Getting his hands dirty, but doing it with style.

Getting Freaky with Your Ideas.

While not a huge Lady Gaga fan, she had a great quote that describes how we all need to approach our creative.

“When you make music or write or create, it’s really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you are writing about at the time.”

Yeah, it is a little graphic, and if you are visual like me, you probably don’t want that image in your head for too long, but her point couldn’t be more succinct. Having the breakthrough idea isn’t the end. It’s the beginning.

We owe it to ourselves to take these creative seeds and grow them into a harvestable crop.  And while creativity has too often come to be seen as the realm where skinny jeans, black-framed glasses and ironic facial hair rule the day from a coffee shop; farming is about as blue-collar as you can get.

(Another good article here about fostering a culture of innovation from UX magazine: – http://uxmag.com/articles/fostering-a-culture-of-innovation)

Since the world’s first trade show, marketers have tried to make their booths stand out among a crowded show floor.  Doing this at CES is even more challenging as the sole mission of every company there to assault the audio/visual senses (oh, and you’re in the heart of downtown Las Vegas, where “subtle” doesnt really play anyway). So to some extent, you can see why people will often go over board in an attempt to capture even a little of the spotlight. The 2013 hoopla was sparked when Mashable reporter Emily Price tweeted out this (maybe NSFW) picture of body-painted “fembots.”

This year, however, people decided to do something about it and began hash-tagging their post of protest with the clever #notbuyingit. The clever double entendre, (originally created by Missrepresntaion.org ) is intended to show both disdain for the practice and a lack of willingness to purchase from vendors. Undoubtedly this means that many marketing VP’s will be updating their LinkedIn status following the show.

The movement is gaining a following too – as of 1/11, #notbuyingit had generated over 736K impressions and more than 380K followers in just 24 hours. A few samples include:

Jan 11 Andre Prime ‏@dreprime

Please stop dehumanizing women to sell your products @HyperMac. http://www.missrepresentation.org/?p=11103  I’m #NotBuyingItimage001.png

Jan 11 Caroline Heldman ‏@carolineheldmanI’m so tired of “booth babes” at Tech shows. There has to be a better way to attract people to your booth. It’s 2013 dammit! #notbuyingit

11 Jan Jessica Lee ‏@jessicallee
Watching the ad campaigns coming out of #CES2013 is nauseating. Can you not sell tech w/o naked women?! #NotBuyingIt

11 Jan cindy vy huynh ‏@cinnie_vy
If your product is good, you don’t need sexism to sell it. Stop dehumanizing women. @HyperMac. http://www.missrepresentation.org/?p=11103  I’m #NotBuyingIt

11 Jan Stephen Foskett ‏@SFoskett
(Don’t) Make Your Startup Look Stupid With Booth Babes And Chotchkies! (A timely repost) #NotBuyingIt http://bit.ly/VSDXaG

This isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, as last year a similar hub-bub grew out of  a BBC reporter asking Gary Shapiro an off-handed remark about the ladies who adorn the convention hall.The net result of that conversation apparently had little effect on this year crop of exhibitor.

Shapiro’s final take (spin though it may be) in 2012 was probably a lot more telling and important than how a marginally successful hard drive company tries to stand out on the show floor. The real tragedy of CES isn’t how people choose to market their goods, rather, “the fact is our nation and industry suffer from too few women scientists, engineers, mathematicians and IT professionals.”

CES/Las Vegas Jan 2012 – Demo dolly, booth babes, hostess, models…Whatever you call them. They are a staple at male-oriented tradeshows and have been around since the guy who stood on soap box to sell snake oil discovered his crowd grew with a pretty lady assistant.

I had come back from CES with a bunch of cool blog ideas (blogging from there while working 19 hour days wasn’t going to happen). And while I may still post a lot of them, an interesting thing caught my eye. It seems that Gary Shapiro, the head of the CEA (the company that runs CES, the largest consumer electronics show in the world) recently stepped in a hole on this issue when he was approached by a BBC reporter to ask about the phenomenon and what it meant to the industry. http://gizmodo.com/ces/

“Well, sometimes it is a little old school, but it does work,” Shapiro tells the BBC. “People naturally want to go towards what they consider pretty. So your effort to try to get a story based on booth babes, which is decreasing rather rapidly in the industry, and say that it’s somehow sexism imbalancing, it’s cute but it’s frankly irrelevant in my view.”

I’ve been in PR and have actually overseen trade show programs for several clients and employers for nearly two decades.  I’d say I’ve been to nearly 100 trade shows myself and I’ve observed that the booth babe phenomenon definitely differs based on the audience of the show.

• At the National Hardware show in Chicago, the booth babe is rampant, with several wearing cutoff jeans and tied up flannels. She is often seen painting, or hammering, but there is usually a lot of bending over (Note, I haven’t been to this show in 10 years. This may have changed)
• At medical and healthcare trade shows (often called conferences to make the boondoggle to Scottsdale in March seem more academic) they are all but non-existent , although companies will often (misguidedly) hire professional presenters and put them in lab coats
• At the PGA and other golf shows I’ve been too, the booth babe is very subtle and very conservative (like golf itself), and often (legitimately) there to model the golf apparel. It always seems to be tight or short apparel though.
• The more edgy fashion and apparel drive shows (such as the World Footwear Association and the uber-hip MAGIC) don’t discriminate and you’re as likely to find a shirtless man as you are women in see-through top.

Many tailored their presentation to their brand and customers, the Audi hostesses were all about 6′ tall blondes with straight hair, who wore “sensible” 4 inch heels and Kate Middleton-inspired blue dresses. The mid-level distributor of “club” sound systems took a different approach as their models were heavy on the makeup, tattoos, and short on clothing. Picture a race scene from the Fast and the Furious.

Booth Babe etiquette also seemed to differ based along cultural lines.  Asian models were popular at booths that attracted mostly Asian men, and brunettes seemed to be in play more at American and South American booths.

Does this mean all Audi drivers are blonde-germans looking to forward their giant race?  Or that all club goers want to buy from vendors who look like extras from Jersey Shore? Of course not.

Marketers are still gauging a lot of their efforts to the basest of human interests. Am I going to trust a television vendor’s technology more because they have a scantily clad woman handing me a flyer? No, of course not, but she might grab my attention and poof! I discover a new technology vendor.  Or, she may offend my sensibility so much that I dismiss a firm that might be a true asset to me and my organization.

Shapiro amended his remarks later saying “The fact is our nation and industry suffer from too few women scientists, engineers, mathematicians and IT professionals. Being married to a surgeon, I have some understanding of the hurdles that women face in what some call a traditionally male profession. But I am also mindful that companies market as they choose and the market determines their success.”

I’d be interested to hear what a woman’s perspective on this is. Does it bother you? Do you see it as business as usual? Do you pity the Demo Dolly? Or is she a non-factor? Let me know.

An emerging pharma R&D company on the fast track to finding a cure for Hepatitis C needed to enhance their brand and company image. Previously, most of their visitors were already researchers or partners already familiar with their great work, but with a higher profile came less familiar visitors and more critical eyes.

After landing the account over some better known firms, BFD went to work on defining the creative for the project. Management didn’t want a lot of bells and whistles, and subsequent interviews revealed that it was important to humanizing the impact of their work, without coming off patronizing.

Launched on the New Year’s Eve 2012, BFD delivered clean, modern looking site that stresses the importance of the work Enanta is doing in human terms by
combining compelling statistics with a mixture of human images and original photography of actual Enanta employees.

The result was a site that simultaneously demonstrated the urgent need and the potential size of the market for the cures that they are helping to create.
[You can see more of Enanta and other projects we've been working on in our updated Portfolio]