One of our coolest customers, Outspark recently launched 3 new awesome looking campaigns, check these out!:

• Fiesta Online: Adealia Launch Trailer
• Refer your friends to 7Dragons!
• Call of Gods – Free Hero Recuiting Package

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – February 2, 2012 – Crowd Factory, the leading Social Campaign Management Platform that enables customers to accelerate word-of-mouth marketing and acquire new customers from the Social Web, today announced record results for fiscal year 2011.

2011 was a tremendous growth year for Crowd Factory, with significant acceleration in all key areas of the business:  revenue, customers, social campaigns deployed by customers, product enhancements and industry awards and recognition.  2011 revenue for Crowd Factory’s cloud-based Social Campaign Management Platform increased 391% and customer usage increased nearly 389% over 2010.  New customers include Jive Software, Molson Coors, Marketo, Hewlett Packard, Fandango, and Quickoffice.

“The social marketing world is a nascent world.  At the moment, Crowd Factory is setting the standard,” said Paul Greenberg, ZDNet contributor and industry analyst.

The story gets better, click here to read the whole release.

Vote and share! Every month we will award one lucky fan a $30 Amazon gift card!

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Our Director of Marketing came across this nifty little piece today and seems like many are sharing the knowledge, so why not practice what we preach!  It seems to us that many small-business owners are still apprehensive about diving into social media. According to a recent survey by Zoomerang Online Surveys and Polls and GrowBiz Media, only a third of small-business owners are using social media, while 40 percent plan on tackling it in 2012.   Flowtown, a social media marketing consultation firm, created the following infographic to help small businesses get with the times, with information on the top social media sites, their purpose and their lingo.  We thought it was pretty cool, what do you think?

If you would like to download the BIG version, click here.

The release of the first Hunger Games film, based on of the wildly successful book trilogy, is less than two months away, but the powers that be are teasing fans with various marketing gems via social media sites. The latest installment — which was released this week — is a high-fashion site called Capitol Couture, dedicated to the fictional capitol city in the post-apocalyptic nation of Panem.

Crowd Factory is also honored that Lionsgate is a finalist for a video award from Socialmedia.org and our social media management application is recognized as helping to leverage indviual level analytics which serve back to fans in a leader board on Facebook!

Crowd Factory is excited to see the One For The Money film in theaters this Friday, January 27th, after a few months of successful social media campaigns in part using Crowd Factory applications to build anticipation.    Check out the trailer and some pictures from our Facebook app!

The movie stars Starring: Katherine Heigl, Jason O’Mara, Daniel Sunjata and Nate Mooney.  From the Janet Evanovich book, an unemployed and newly-divorced Stephanie Plum lands a job at her cousin’s bail-bond business, where her first assignment puts her on the trail of a wanted local cop from her romantic past.

Marketing Automation In Action: A View From Mission Control: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see how Marketo can lift off your marketing automation programs. See lead nurturing and lead scoring in action. Revenue performance management: we have lift off!

Crowd Factory is honored to have launched the first, of what we hope is many, of Marketo’s campaigns.  Marketo is the revenue performance management company, revolutionizing how marketing and sales teams of all sizes work — and work together — to accelerate predictable revenue.

For the first time in U.S. history, marketers are projected to spend more on online advertising than on advertising in print magazines and newspapers.

According to a study released Thursday by eMarketer, online advertising is expected to generate $39.5 billion in sales this year — a 23.3% increase from 2011 — compared to a spend of $33.8 billion on print.

That’s impressive growth, especially since 2011 also witnessed a 23% jump in online ad spending, according to eMarketer’s calculations. Online ad revenues should continue to grow over the next half-decade, albeit at a more modest rate, as shown in the chart below. Total online ad investment is projected to hit $62 billion by that time.

The forecast for print is foreboding. Marketers are expected to continue cutting their print advertising budgets for the next half-decade, spending $32.3 billion in 2016, 10% less than what they invested in print ads in 2011.

Spending on TV promises to be largely unaffected by growing online ad budgets, although the gap between the two is set to narrow significantly. U.S. marketers are expected to spend $72 billion in TV advertising in 2016, up 18.6% from 2011.

Overall, it looks to be a healthy year for the ad industry, with total U.S. ad spending forecast to grow by 6.7% to $169.5 billion. eMarketer attributes the bump to investment in campaigns ads and mobile advertising. Total ad spending is set to reach nearly $200 billion by 2016, of which online will account for a third.

Some of the key points found include:

1. 1. A Press release share generates 2 new views; expands total audience by 70%.
2. 2. Press releases are shared more on Facebook, but Twitter drives more traffic.
3. 3. Multimedia press releases generate 3.5 times more engagement than text-only.

Check out the full article on our website!

By Kelly Jo Horton

One of the most frequent requests I hear from customers is, “I want more Likes on Facebook. How do I get more Likes?” What is a Like worth anyway?

Likes were originally conceived to give brand fans a way to publicly declare their love and their loyalty to you, but their value has been diluted over time because they have become so pervasive. There are Like buttons on corporate pages, order confirmation pages, photo sharing sites, and now the analog version of “Please Like us on Facebook” printed on your retail receipt. We all want to be “Liked,” but the truth is the vast majority of people who Like your Facebook page never return.

So the question you should be asking yourself is not how do I get more Likes, but how can I monetize the ones I have.

Discovering the currency of your brand fans.

A Like is worth nothing if the person who clicked the Like button never engages. So how do you engage your brand fans and empower them to bring you more Likes? Find out what the currency of your fans is and “pay” them. Put yourself in the shoes of your fans and ask yourself why you would come back to the brand page.

Some examples of currencies and payouts:

• Healthcare: your currency is knowledge and information. Your fans expect up-to-date articles on healthcare, links to groundbreaking studies, and a forum for questions.These are the items they would be willing to share to their network.
  Bright Idea: Create a custom Facebook tab called “Clip of the Week,” and share a different health tip video every week, and encourage people to share and comment.

• Music Artist: Your currency is exclusivity. Your fans want to be the first to know that you’re eating a burger at a dive in some little town between tour stops. They want their friends to know that you just released a new single and they got the download before anyone because they Liked your page. Update your page with personal status updates on a regular basis so your fans have a reason to come back.
  Bright Idea: Create a Facebook tab with a Like Gate and a link to an exclusive download of your latest single.

• B2C: You assume your currency is the all mighty deal and the discount, but that’s not always true. Status updates about product discounts result in the lowest rate of interaction  of all Facebook posts. Your best currency is opinion. Create a weekly poll and ask your fans for their opinion. This will engage your fans, give you a high rate of interaction, and encourage them to share the content out to their network.
  Bright Idea: Create a poll that lets fans vote on the next flavor of ice cream you’ll produce, a limited edition color for a car, or a new menu item.

It’s not always about money.

The bottom line is that monetizing your fans doesn’t always mean selling them something. If you keep them engaged you will earn their trust and loyalty over time, and they will be more likely to buy when you do present them with that offer.