At Mantooth, we are constantly trying to find new ways to incorporate creative tactics into our Social Media Marketing. We don’t want to continuously offer the same-old thing over and over again. Instead, we want to create a fun, giving and socially responsible presence.

This thought process has led us to begin implementing different monthly Social Media Marketing campaigns through our Facebook page that benefit non-profit organizations whose missions and values align with ours.

Last month, Mantooth donated $250.00 to the Food Bank for Larimer County after holding a contest asking Facebook users what they were thankful for. Not only did we receive a variety of very touching “thankful” stories, but we also encouraged the community to support a local non-profit that does amazing things for Larimer County.

This month (December) we are doing a similar contest, but this time we are asking Facebook users to post photos of them and their pets on our Facebook page. For each photo, we are donating $5.00 to the Larimer Humane Society to give toys and treats to homeless dogs this holiday season. We are already at a total donation of $205.00 and we are within the first two weeks of the campaign!

Social Media Marketing is a  powerful tool for marketers, businesses and non-profit organizations, and with the largest online community in the world, Facebook, we have the opportunity to partner up and create mutually beneficial relationships.

We urge businesses and marketers alike to get creative, especially during the holidays, with your marketing efforts. Don’t just get creative though, get creative and give back.

Check out some of our clients and help them help the community through their Social Media Marketing campaigns:

The Mantooth Company
Big O Tires- Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley
Huntington Learning Center of Northern Colorado
The Human Bean CO

It seems as though I am not the only one who has been testing out Google Plus. Facebook has recently announced a new way to share posts with who you want, a new way that very similarly resembles Google Plus circles. The new way, which I am a huge fan of, allows for you to decide who gets to see your status update, photo, interests, activities, everything really- with exactly who you want right when you post it. Of course because this is a new feature and sort of an add-on, it isn’t as easy as it is with Google Plus where when they launched they already had the circles in place and you decided where people went when you first connected with them, instead I will ultimately have to go in and create custom groups and try to group my 1,400 friends into categories (aka circles).

In Facebook’s announcement of the profile changes, they explained their decision by stating, “Your profile should feel like your home on the web – you should never feel like stuff appears there that you don’t want, and you should never wonder who sees what’s there. The profile is getting some new tools that give you clearer, more consistent controls over how photos and posts get added to it, and who can see everything that lives there.”

They are also rolling out a feature where you can view your profile as another person directly from their page. This was a feature that was available by rifling through your Privacy Settings, but as Facebook has stated that “the main change is moving most of your controls from a settings page to being inline, right next to the posts, photos and tags they affect.”

So in general: good job Facebook, for taking the benefits that Google Plus had and incorporating them into Facebook.

I recently saw an article featured in a Northern Colorado Business Report email blast that covered the partnership between Yahoo and Facebook trying to figure out if the “six degrees of separation” idea is valid or not in a social networking sense. This experiment, that they have termed the “Small World Experiment,” aims to determine the social path between two strangers by tapping into Facebook. Facebook is the perfect forum for this experiment considering it is the largest social network in the world with 750 million users.

What really caught my eye though, was that the article (which was originally written by Emil Protalinksi, who has covered the tech industry beat for five years for multiple publications) states that the average number of friends a Facebook user has on the network rests at only 130. At first I found this number to be impossible and incorrect, but when I checked the facts with the Facebook Press Page, it turns out that it is correct.

On the Facebook Press Page, Facebook provides the following statistics:

• More than 750 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• Average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

As an avid Facebook user and a Social Media Director of a marketing company,  it makes sense that I would have more Facebook friends than the average user, but almost 1,400 more Facebook friends than the average user? When I went through our staff Facebook pages it seemed to be a trend, every single member of Mantooth Marketing Company has far more than 130 Facebook friends. While Facebook does not provide an average number of “likes” on a business page, it seems as though a majority of the businesses that Mantooth serves have far more than 130 likes as well, in fact, most of them have hundreds (and some break the thousands mark).

So what’s my point? It is important that when you hire a company to execute social media marketing tactics, you make sure that that particular company can practice what they preach. Like a web design company with a bad website, social media marketing takes more than posting status updates- it takes understanding the goal of social networking while also enjoying it.

Check out our Facebook page and “like” us today!

You might have gotten an email recently, or maybe even sent an email recently, for the new Google + Project. Basically it is a testing site for what is sure to become Facebook’s biggest rival.

As of right now, Google has launched a field trial period of Google +. The trial is an invitation-only approach to launching a social networking site slowly, so that the rough patches can be sorted out and glitches can be managed before launching completely.

If you aren’t on Google + yet, here is the down low:

• Much like Facebook, you can add your friends and they can see your posts, however unlike Facebook you can add them into particular “circles”
• Much like Facebook, you can post status updates, however now you can determine which “circle” of people you want each status to go to (for example, if you want your friends but not your colleagues to see something- you can select your friends circle only when you share something)
• Instead of the “like” button, there is a “+1” button. When you +1 something, it is placed on your profile under +1’s, which can either be private or public based on your privacy settings
• When you are logged into your Google account (be it Gmail or another), you can Google on the web while staying logged into Google + and continuing to receive notifications
• You can link to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flikr and any other site that you want to and those links will appear on your profile
• There is a stream, much like the Facebook “Newsfeed”
• There is a chat much like Facebook, however you can add others to your chat and create a chatroom-esque conversation

There are a ton of capabilities to Google +, many of which will urge Facebook to add new components to their social networking site, but the big question remains: is it enough to pull the billions of users already using Facebook to learn and adapt to a new site with a different interface?

We will continue to update you on the progress and development of Google +, and if you want to see our Social Media Director in action, add her to one of your circles: Kerrie@mantoothcompany.com.

If anyone knows how to capitalize on their success using social media, it is Lady Gaga. If you don’t know who Lady Gaga is (basically if you’ve been hiding under a rock since 2009) she is the over-the-top female pop star who once dressed herself in nothing but raw meat for an awards show and who is notorious for being absolutely ridiculous.

Lady Gaga IS the queen of social media, for example:

• Lady Gaga is the first Twitter user with more than 10 million followers
• She was also the first Facebook celebrity with to hit 10 million fans
• She was also the first artist with 1 billion views on YouTube

But along with the regular, she has also taken her social media use to ridiculous levels- she recently stepped outside of the box to promote her new album by partnering up with social gaming company Zynga to launch GagaVille, yes GagaVille- a Gaga-themed offshoot of the popular Facebook game FarmVille, but that’s not all. If you play Words with Friends on your Smartphone you may also have seen the Gaga Themed Sweepstakes, “Words with Gaga,” where there is a special “Word of the Day” being made available until May 26. If you play that word in any of your games that day, you’ll be entered to win a Daily Prize pack. Each of the daily prize packs include a signed copy of Lady Gaga’s newest CD “Born This Way,” along with a three-day, two night trip for the winner and a guest to see Lady Gaga in concert.

Lady Gaga has ALSO recently partnered with Starbucks for a digital scavenger hunt. “SRCH by Starbucks featuring Lady Gaga,” as the hunt is called, will start with the in-store QR code scan (which are those square barcodes you take a photo of with your Smartphone) which then takes customers through a series of digital clues. Players will be required to visit certain blogs and Starbucks digital properties to decode messages and put things together in a true scavenger hunt-way. The clues are arranged into rounds and encourage group play and sharing- of course. The first players to solve all the clues will be rewarded with Starbucks- and Lady Gaga-related prizes.

Considering all of the above and the fact that Lady Gaga has a larger reach than Barack Obama on Twitter, it wasn’t surprising that earlier this month Lady Gaga came out the winner at MTV’s newly launched O Music Awards, taking home “Most Innovative Artist” and “Must Follow Artist on Twitter.”

Marketers, companies and other celebrities need to take a page from the Gaga book, because what she’s doing is working, and digital IS the way of the future.