The Atomicdust family is welcoming its newest member- baby Miles!

One of the biggest challenges with this project was the amount of content that would be available on the site. With pages and pages of copy, the site structure and usability was as much a key component as the look and feel. The main goal was to keep the abundance of information digestible and easy to find for the visitors. Working closely with their project manager, we laid out a successful website structure and design, and then handed it over for their internal development team to build out.

by James Dixson

MTV has announced that Danielle Hohmeier, our resident social media pro, has been selected as one of the 20 finalists in MTV’s “Follow Me: The Search for the First MTV TJ.”

MTV used Twitter and blogs to find applicants for a new job opportunity to serve as the first-ever MTV TJ, or ‘Twitter Jockey.‘  The winner will be hired to become the new face and voice for MTV across social media platforms, including MTV.com, to expand the two-way dialogue between MTV and its global audience.

Danielle will compete against 20 other social media enthusiasts in various Twitter challenges during the month of July. The contest will culminate with a live televised finale on August 8, where the MTV viewing audience will choose the winning candidate and offer them his or her dream job.

According to MTV, “The newly created position expands upon MTV’s history of giving its audience a global platform to express themselves. MTV uses social media to make it easier for its fans to engage around loud programming moments—everything from Twitter visualizations for award shows and chat widgets for popular series like The Jersey Shore, to an active Twitter and Facebook following.”

“We are anxious and excited that Danielle was selected,” said James Dixson, Atomicdust Principal and CMO, “We’ll miss her when she wins, but the entire staff and I will tweet relentlessly to help her win MTV’s challenges.”

Danielle has been with Atomicdust since January 2010. Her efforts to improve Atomicdust’s reach have resulted in a growth in Twitter content and followers, among other things. 

“Our web traffic has tripled since Danielle started,” said Mike Spakowski, Creative Director, “She adds a personal and conversational tone to @Atomicdust and coaches our clients on their social campaigns.”

To stay up to date on the competition, make sure you are following Danielle on Twitter and keeping up with the ZYNC American Express MTV TJ page on Facebook. And to learn more about Danielle, check out her TJ bio. 

First off, I assure you this blog isn’t becoming a commentary on Facebook (note the previous posts Facebook Success Story: The Pickle and Facebook is Taking Over the World), but considering it is pretty much the biggest social media outlet out there (going on, if not already surpassing, 500 million users), it is kind of hard to ignore it. 

For the last month or so, Facebook has been under fire for their privacy controls, or should I say, lack thereof. They’ve since admitted they ‘made a bunch of mistakes’ and improved their privacy page so that you have better control, but their issues uncovered a bigger question-

Does privacy exists online? Should it?

Whether you were reading articles about it on the Internet or debating it at SMCSTL, chances are, your opinion on the Facebook privacy debacle fell somewhere along these lines...

1. Eh, who cares. Online privacy was dead a long time ago. 

2. OMG, they are giving away all my information! I’m quitting Facebook. Who’s with me?!

3. What privacy issue?

Personally, I fall into the ‘A’ category. Perhaps it is my marketing mindset, but I’m online because I want to be seen. And if you are a business, you should be the same way. 

The main reason you get online is for exposure. For businesses, you want people to see your website, your Twitter, your Facebook, wherever you are, so that they are more inclined to buy your product or service or visit your store or trust in your expertise. For personal accounts, you get online because you want to see and be seen by friends, family, potential employers, and even random strangers with shared interests.

Instead of asking if online privacy exists, I’ll ask you this- Why would you want to get online, just to hide?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Dan Fletcher of Time Magazine that "the mission of the company is to make the world more open and connected.” And, in my opinion, it’s working. 

Nowadays, we are sharing more information about ourselves than ever before. In his Time article, How Facebok is Redefining Privacy, Fletcher writes, “Getting to the point where so many of us are comfortable living so much of our life on Facebook represents a tremendous cultural shift... Facebook has changed our social DNA, making us more accustomed to openness.”

Remember when everyone went by silly aliases instead of their real names? When was the last time you saw a sparkleprincess27 online? Maybe there are still people using identities like this, but more and more, people are using their real names (or some version of it, like my personal Twitter handle @daniellesmyname). 

I’m all for being as real, as transparent as possible online. And it is important to take ownership for your identity and your brand before someone else does (case in point, @BPGlobalPR). You just have to be conscious of the fact that your online activity is a direct reflection of your offline identity- and that goes for both personal accounts and business accounts. 

I think Nick O’Neill of All Facebook says it best in his post, Does Facebook Privacy Even Matter?:

“The true fact of the matter, despite the questions of how privacy settings should function, is that we are increasingly responsible for our behavior because the “public domain” has expanded dramatically. Facebook has been an enabler of this process, however they aren’t the only ones responsible for it... It won’t matter what Facebook does with their privacy settings, if you control your offline behavior, you can control your online behavior and safety as well.”

No matter what Facebook does with their controls, the reality is, if you’re online, people will be able to find you. 

And that’s okay. 

That is the whole purpose of the Internet. You should want people to find you. 

Last week, our fearless leader (otherwise known as 'Creative Director'), Mike Spakowski, was interviewed by The St. Louis Egotist on how we got started, our project philosophy, and his advice for designers, writers, and developers. 

Here is what he had to say about what Atomicdust really is...

“When people ask if Atomicdust is a web shop, or print shop, I always say that we really focus on developing a good idea. Then we apply that idea to whatever channels will best deliver it for the audience... Good ideas are always worth something.”

The St. Louis Egotist is a website that features innovative, creative work going on in the St. Louis area, and we were honored to be featured on their site. 

Check out Mike’s full interview here. 

No.

We at Atomicdust know that summer hasn’t officially started until we’ve spent some quality time outside on our patio. And this afternoon, we did just that.

For lunch, James grilled some delicious garden salmon, gorgonzola & onion, cheddar & bacon burgers with grilled asparagus, zucchini and portabello mushrooms. Hmm hmmm, good.

Thanks James!

Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating. Facebook is not taking over the world (yet), but it is taking over the internet with their recent changes.

I’m not a Fan anymore...
In fact, nowadays, no one is. This was the first of the big Facebook changes. People are no longer ‘fans’ of your Facebook Page, but instead they ‘like’ it.

A lot of people are arguing that this devalues the relationship between the user and the Page. Really? Because that single click it took to become a fan carries so much more weight than the single click it takes to ‘like’ the page?

I don’t think so. At the Social Fresh conference a few weeks back, I was reminded that you can’t overvalue that one click. The emphasis should be on user engagement and loyalty- and that doesn’t change just because you change what you call the people who support your page.

Facebook is following you.... Everywhere
Facebook’s change from ‘fanning’ a page to ‘liking’ it made a whole lot more sense once they rolled out Open Graph at the F8 Developer Conference. Now, you can pretty much ‘like’ anything on the Internet. It started off with just a few partnered websites- CNN, Pandora, Levi’s, to name a few- but has quickly spread across the internet (all it takes to add the social plugins to your site is some simple coding).

What does this mean, exactly?

It means that your Facebook identity is following you everywhere. When you visit a site that has one of Facebook’s plugins, you will see a Like button that you can click to alert all of your Facebook friends via their newsfeeds that you like the page. But it gets way more in depth than that. Websites can also opt for more robust plugins that will show you how many of your friends like that page or even recommend other pages of the site you might like based on where your friends are.

Think information like that doesn’t matter? Well, I think you’re wrong. And so do 68% of Facebook users. According to a survey by market research and consulting firm Morpace, that‘s the percentage of consumers who say a positive referral from a Facebook friend makes them more likely to buy a specific product or visit a certain retailer.

“Google just found its nemesis” -Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus
Facebook’s recent developments are an effort ‘to make the web a more social place.’ Think about it: Now you aren’t just visiting a website. You are seeing which of your friends already like it and you are able to tell them that you like it too (all without leaving the confines of you desk... or putting down your cell phone).

As Charlie Witkowski of Social Studies Blog puts it, Facebook is paving the way for the web to move from an information-based platform to a social platform. Where Google’s emphasis is search, the emphasis with Facebook is interaction. Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, points out, "Instead of targeting people based on their click behavior or search behavior, it's targeting based on their relationship to people and to brands and content."

So, is Google in trouble?

I don’t think so. Sure, Facebook recently beat out the web giant as the most visited site in the U.S. and its user base is reaching a staggering 500 million users worldwide, but I think this just represents a shift in the way people are using the internet. Even the great Google has made efforts to add social components to their ever-expanding empire with Google Buzz.

‘Social media’ is a trendy topic for a reason.

People need to be social (I’m not making this up. It’s a tier in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). Facebook and other sites with social networking aspects have flourished as people try to fulfill this need. Social media is working because people want that sense of community and belonging, even when it comes through the internet and not face-to-face interactions.  

Danielle Hohmeier writes about marketing and design in the digital world for Atomicdust, with a focus on marketing convergence and social media.

Growing up, my parents placed a strong emphasis on education. Whether for the purpose of instilling a love of knowledge, or in an attempt to live vicariously through us the lives they dreamed of, I’m not sure. My guess is the latter.

Either way, they knew a good education would enable us to have the understanding necessary to make important decisions and to choose our own adventure in life.

The term “knowledge is power” is not new, however, it represents a concept that is often forgotten or abused in marketing.

I don’t know which is worse: content that is too top-level, giving the audience only fluffy, feel-good words that do nothing to develop a deeper, more actionable understanding, or bulleted lists of details that go on and on for days. There is a fine line to be walked between a preachy, marketing message and a specifications list that makes eyes’ cross, but when that balance is found, customers gain an education that is comforting and empowers decision making.

The majority of our clients operate in saturated healthcare and technology markets whose competitive landscapes are smeared with parity. When lots of companies with similar products and services are talking to the same people, they are typically trying to out-detail one another in an attempt to stand out. Millions of marketing dollars are spent as bullet points are reworded and reordered. Instead of finding compelling, digestible information, customers find themselves caught in the middle of a subtle battle of semantics.

It’s amazing how precious these details become to companies, when they do nothing to help customers distinguish one brand from the other.

This is where a good – and in many cases, bold – education makes or breaks a relationship. Customers get confused when you have “the most authoritative system” and your competitor has “the most trusted system.” What’s the difference? What does that even mean?

Unless you’re educating them on what your claim really means to you, and more importantly, what it really means to them, they’re likely to stay confused and neutral because they don’t have a clear reason to pick your brand over your competitor’s. Remember, when everyone says they’re the best, no one is the best, and details don’t make strong, emotional connections.

There are numerous ways to create education-driven marketing material. Start by thinking about what happens to the content once it’s left the hands of the sales and marketing teams. What will happen to it once it hits an inbox or loads on a screen? It’s on its own at that point...at least until it’s lined up next to the competition.

Here are some tips:

• You can start by nixing the bullet points (not these bullet points... These bullet points are for dramatic effect).
• Don’t be afraid to not sell. If the content that’s created is purely informative, it can be a more powerful sales tool than the most persuasive pile of marketing jargon. Establishing your company as a resource for helpful information creates a positive, low-pressure impression.
• Be honest, be human and be considerate of the attention span of your customer - education shouldn’t be work.

Combine these approaches with a unique centralized message, and you’ve got a memorable impression that people understand well enough to side with.

Remember that customers don’t want to be sold. They want help. They want something great. They want reassurance. They want know that they’re making a good decision. Knowledge really is power and, in this case, it may be the best sales tool you’ve got.

Jesse McGowan is Account Director at Atomicdust and works with clients to develop marketing strategy.