Scheduled for September 29, 2012, the Fall ARTS Fest will be celebrating the arts with over 300 Artisans, featuring the “Etsy Studio”, Gourmet Food Vendors, Live Music, Performing Arts, Craft Brews, Wine Tasting, Scarecrow Competition, Chili Cook-Off and other Creative Activities.

To stay up-to-date on the festival, local art and music, creative arts and crafts ideas, or to attend or be part of the festival, make sure to become a friend of their shiny, new social media pages (listed below) today and we will see you in September!

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linked-In, Pinterest

This is Mamoun’s first foray in social media so stay tuned to learn more about the great things that will be happening at the Mamoun Learning Center.

Help us welcome back on board media placement client Rancho Costa Verde!

Rancho Costa Verde is by far one of LMS Agency’s most cutting edge, eco-friendly clients. Rancho Costa Verde, a 100% Green community located in San Felipe Mexico boasts beach front living starting at just $17, 500. Imagine never paying for an electricity bill but not having to sacrifice on any of the amenities of your dream home. The dream is now a reality thanks to the likes of Rancho Costa Verde.

LMS Agency Inc. has been brought on to  help tap into RCV’s target market through radio placements on San Diego Stations KOGO and JACK FM and through newspaper placements in the San Diego Union Tribune. Stay tuned for the radio campaign on KOGO and JACK FM starting this Monday May 7, 2012 and running throughout the month.

Still want to learn more about living green and living in Mexico? Check out RCV’s Facebook page and sign up for one of their informational dinners!

Ms. Sadowski will be educating conference goers on how to implement and manage their social media campaigns through engagement and creativity.  This annual conference is attended by highly respected business owners, court employees and independent contractors from across the nation. LMS is privileged to participate with this distinguished group.

One of the fastest growing social media platforms Pinterest has driven more referral traffic to retailers than LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+. So what does this mean for you? Perhaps you were you one of those businesses that resisted creating other social media sites thinking that social media didn’t apply to your company…and then ended up being behind your competitors when you did finally start a page?  Well here is your opportunity to get ahead of the marketing curve and start taking advantage of the rapid growth of the newest social platform and help drive traffic to your business. If you need help setting up your Pinterest account for your business make sure to check out our article on Creating a Pinterest Account for Business.

Marketing Strategies for Pinterest

Following Your Target Market: Following people on Pinterest will help drive traffic to your own Pinterest account. Once you follow someone’s boards they are notified that you are following them and then allowing them the chance to return the favor thus giving you the opportunity to drive more traffic to your site and pages.

Repinning: Repinning is another opportunity to drive traffic to your boards and ultimately the links to your sites that you are promoting.  When you repin another’s picture the person who originally pinned the picture gets notified.  Most likely that person will respond to the notification by seeing where it was repinned, what comments were attached and it also gives them the chance to look through your boards and follow you. Since the goal is to be repinned by your audience the need for interesting boards is important to keep the engagement level high.

Commenting: Engagement is the key to any successful social media campaign. Taking an interest in someone’s pins, respectfully commenting and participating with others will get you noticed, increase your following and help support your brand’s growth.  As with any social media campaign, avoid self-promotion and leading with your product, your pitch or your services.

Liking: “Liking” someone’s boards on Pinterest is a nice gesture and may get you noticed but unfortunately is the least effective in regards to marketing since no one can get to the source of the like. We are not telling you to avoid “liking” –but in regards to marketing, until we see how the Pinterest model evolves, this is the least effective in driving traffic to yourself.

Looking for examples? Check out some of our latest work for our clients or join us on our LMS Agency Inc. Pinterest page. Don’t forget to drop us a note and let us know what you think—we would love to hear from you….until then Happy Pinning!

Pinterest is one of the newest and fastest growing social networks to date.  With over 11.7 million unique visitors Pinterest boasts being the top referring site to retailers to date.  Defined, Pinterest is a platform that enables users to visually share, create and discover new interests by posting images or videos to their own or other’s boards.  Also referred to as ‘pinning’ users can upload their own images, utilize the “Pin It” bookmarklet button for images on the web or ‘repin’ from other friends boards.

In simplest terms—Pinterest is one of the fastest growing, creative platforms to drive traffic to your business website and social sites via online engagement.  If you are looking to start your business Pinterest page make sure that you follow these steps to ensure that you are utilizing this online platform to its fullest and getting the return on investment that you deserve:

1. Get a Pinterest Account: Believe it or not Pinterest is still an invitation only site.  For the fastest way to get an invitation ask a friend that has an account to send you an invite or go on Pinterest’s Facebook page to request one. Last resort we recommend that you go to their website and request an invitation but from what we heard there is no projecting when you will get your invitation as there have been complaints on the slow turnaround of requesting invitations via the website.
2. Activate your Account: Once you have your invitation make sure that you sign up for Pinterest with your same email address that you use for your business Twitter.  You want to make sure that you sign up through your business Twitter account and not your personal Facebook account because Pinterest does not have an option yet of connecting with your business Facebook page.
3. Optimize Your Pinterest Business Page: Under the settings tab choose your company name as your profile name, input a detailed summary of your company, upload your logo and enter a link to your website.  If your business is in the marketing of you—and this is how people will recognize you– then we recommend that you upload a picture of yourself rather than a logo. Most importantly make sure that the option that reads “Hide Your Pinterest from Search Engines” is checked to “off” so you are searchable.
4. Pinterest Etiquette: As with any social media platform you are highly discouraged from practicing self-promotion.  Written clearly in the Pinterest rules the site states: “Pinterest is designed to curate and share things you love. If there is a photo or project you’re proud of, pin away! However, try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion.”  To be successful on Pinterest join in the conversation, engage with others, like others content, comment and most importantly strive at creating interesting, unique content that will be of interest to others. If you follow all of these rules you will build quality followers, drive traffic to your sites and further strengthen your brand.
5. Building a Following: Before you begin adding to your follower base you will want to have some content (boards) in place that are a good representation of your brand. Having boards in place before you start building is crucial since you need to give the prospective followers a reason to follow you in the first place.  Once you have a few boards in place you have two options with following—you can follow a user or you can follow a particular board.  When following a board you will only be notified if the owner of the board posts to that particular board. When following a user you will be alerted to when the user posts to any of their boards.  Keep in mind that because of these differences in following a user’s board may boast more followers than the actual user.  Make sure to follow a strategy that creates followers on both the board and the user level by creating the best boards on specific topics, promoting through other channels (such as your email signature, other social channels or website links) and by commenting and liking on other Pinterest user’s accounts.

Interested in learning on how to further market your Pinterest account? Check out our list of top ways to successfully grow your Pinterest business account. Remember that even though Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media sites it is still a relatively young platform.  We can only assume that there will be many advances in marketing as the platform matures such as direct messaging, improved linking and analytics and potentially more automated services that we are already seeing pop up as the company grows. To help stay informed and up-to-date on all the latest social media trends make sure to check back often as LMS Agency Inc. will keep you posted of any and all insights moving forward.

The 3rd Annual MVCBF, brings together local food, local beer, & local music and will be held on April 1, 2012 at the Handlery Hotel in Mission Valley, San Diego.

As if the combined 40 breweries and renown chefs isn’t already enough to get you to the event a percentage of all MVCBF ticket sales will go to Wounded Warrior Homes.  Wounded Warrior Homes is a non-profit organization that serves medically discharged, men and women of our armed forces with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Proceeds will help provide affordable housing, hands-on resources, and a defined path for each member to transition from active-duty military service to independent living as a veteran of foreign wars.

Beer, food, helping others and of course hanging out with LMS at the coolest After Party ever….I’d be surprised if you haven’t already booked those tickets!

See you there!

Cheers,

LMS Agency Inc.

Humannovate is an emerging initiative that uses innovation and local inspiration as a vehicle for solving food-related social challenges.  Through their pilot projects: Mobile Farmer’s Market (MFM) and Community Supported Agriculture Connect (CSAC) their vision is to provide farm fresh food to elementary schools, colleges and corporations in every American city by 2020.

Their mission is simple: Bring S.S.L.O.W food into American tummies.

Equally important as the words on your website are the visual elements. Photos can position you as forward-thinking and creative; alternatively, if not chosen wisely they can portray your company as backward and tired. Why would you want the same old cliché photos and copy that is seen on everyone else’s websites? The following images and phrases are the worst of the worst. If you have them on your site, I’m begging you to remove them… immediately. They are the broccoli in your teeth, the toilet paper on your shoe and the price tag hanging out of the shirt you wore to work today all rolled up in one.

WE KNOW BUSINESS…

What does it mean? Does it mean that two male handshakes plus a globe is the international sign for “we are all about the biz”? Whatever it means this image is all over the internet and it tops the list of bad messages. Please remove this image and replace with a picture of Stan from accounting or Lisa in Human Resources; these are the people that know your business so showcase them.  Additionally if you have the catch phrases that include but are not limited to:

“We are the force behind your business…..”

“Your single source for business strategies” or

“Our handshake means something”

….take them off your site. Please.

WE ARE SMARTER THAN YOU

Is this telling us that your company is the missing piece to the puzzle or that you are going to collectively beat me at a fierce game of Scrabble? These cliché images paired with catch phrases that need to literally be spelled out for your consumers are not the answer to any website…ever. So say goodbye to the word games, puzzle pieces and Rubix cubes. No one likes pretentiousness. Replace these with real photos of your work, your products or your services. Additionally if you are spelling out anything like the following words nix them off your site:

T-E-A-M

S-T-R-A-T-E-G-Y

M-A-R-K-E-T-I-N-G

WE- A-R-E- C-O-O-L

WE HIRE YOUNG, BEAUTIFUL, ETHNIC PEOPLE…AND ONE OLD GUY

We understand the need for equal opportunity but all this picture is implying is that you were recently in a discrimination suit or are too scared to be deemed politically incorrect. Great companies such as yours hire according to ability and it should be shown through real pictures of your team. Chances are that unless you are a company that deals in placing runway models your staff consists of real people with their own uniqueness to boast. So get ready to say “cheese” we do want to see real pictures of you and your employees and we don’t want to see phrases like:

“There is no “I” in team”

“Together we stand”

“United as one”

WE ARE SUPER DUPER GOOD AT GRAPHS

This graph and other similar images are frequently found on financial, mortgage and banking sites but what exactly is this graph saying? “We don’t have real number so show you but this graph…that is on our competitor’s site too…. will surely impress you!”

Replace images of graphs with real people, real numbers and real results. Case studies, current news or anything with clear and concise content will keep your audience’s attention.

Phrases to avoid:

“Because Life is hard….”

“We bank on it…”

“Investing in YOU”

WE DEFINE COOL

We are so cool and cutting edge that we strike these poses every day right after we work on our team cheers. (Look at the blonde—now she REALLY knows what she is doing!) This image says: “Having cool people like us, like totally, means we deliver results…like ok?” My advice: time to take off the “cool” pictures. Additionally if you have any acronyms or cheers that you learned at your last Cool Team Building Retreat keep them out of the copy:

T- Together!

E- Everyone!

A- Achieves!

M- More!

or

TOGETHER we stand, TOGETHER we fall, TOGETHER we win, and winners take ALL! YAY!

ARE YOU CALLING ME STUPID?

What does this picture mean?

That you don’t get “it: or that I don’t get “it”?

I am confused.

Whichever message you are trying to get across— you either insulted yourself or me. Please take this image off or any similar images… and while you are at it take off any messaging such as:  “The Solution Finders” “Eureka!” or “Huh?”

__________________________

As you can see putting together a quality website is not a simple task; it takes hours of writing, editing, careful imagery selection and a lot of invested time and resources into making sure that you are properly showcasing your company. If you are setting off on the journey of creating a new website remember to stay away from quick, fix-it solutions with cheesy stock photos and cliché marketing messaging; this will only hurt your company’s image. Stick with the imagery and company messaging that is unique to your company—by doing so you set yourself apart and ahead of your competition.

Tara’s Team is a local, online search website launching in San Diego on December 1, 2011.  From dining, entertainment, and beauty services,  to pet services, auto repairs and fitness centers Tara’s Team is the most comprehensive, authentic online database there is in all of San Diego’s greater metropolitan area.

Tara’s Team is hip and edgy and only lists the most exclusive service leaders and hot spots in all of San Diego. Pieced together over the course of over 10 years this list is the list that you need to help guide you through the best kept secrets, must do’s and must haves of San Diego.  It is an improved Angie’s list that’s edgier and more modern; a non-limiting Zagat Guide that covers more than just dining; an unbiased Yelp where you know what you are reading is genuine; a reputable discount resource that isn’t excluding in how many people reap the rewards and a coveted “Best Of” list… all wrapped into one.

So go and check out Tara’s Team’s brand-spanking new social sites now and their debut website on December 1, 2011!  Let us know what you think, join in the conversation and most of all  get ready to sign up for the “It List” that will change San Diego living forever.

Quite simply, life just doesn’t get any better than this!