Posted 9/17/2012
By Angie Kilbourne, AAM

Web Wise: Divide [into Thirds] and Conquer

The Rule of Thirds traditionally has applied to photography and graphic design, but recently, there’s been a lot of chatter about a new Rule of Thirds that’s applied specifically to the social media arena.

This formula for social media marketing efforts is elegantly simple to employ – and more importantly, remember:

• One third of your time spent on social media, talk about your brand, your company and your products. Tell them about how great you and your employees are.
• One third of your social media time, talk about the industry in general, posting and commenting on content from external sources. Show that you care about what’s happening in the industry and how your followers can be affected by it.
• Finally, one third of your time, just be yourself. There’s nothing wrong with having one-on-one conversations with your followers.

So how well do you think you are doing with this balancing act on social media channels?

Giving equal social media time to each of these areas, you give people choice tidbits of who you and your organization are and what you stand for, allowing them to decide if they “Like” you. Likes lead them to wanting to know you better, which in turn, gets them listening to you in a more active manner.

Tech Tools

ASA benefit provider AutoNetTV (ANTV) recently launched a new multimedia tool that caught our attention.

The Digital Menu Board brings a new level of interaction to your shop’s lobby. The board takes your current menu board and moves it to a flat-screen TV, allowing you multiple layout formats and the ability to add logos and other graphics. In addition, you have access to ANTV’s animations, videos and other graphics.

But the most interesting point (for me, at least) is that the entire system uses a digital network device that allows a shop to update the board from any computer with Internet access. Which means you could be home or at a remote office, and you can make changes whenever needed. You can even schedule specific content to display within a date range; you set the dates content will change, and let the system run automatically.

“We’ve been testing it at several locations. Users keep coming back to us, saying, ‘Customers are watching this, and it’s a conversation-starter,’” says Bobby Cannon, ANTV’s director of sales.