Trak Attack

Meet our intern, Mike Trakalo. Not only does Mike have a great moustache, he's a great intern too.

This isn’t the first time Cruise Media Group has seen Mike’s face around the office. Mike spent three weeks with us last December and has come back again to work with our team!

Mike has a degree in Rhetoric and Communications and is graduating from Red River College's Creative Communications (CreComm) program in the next few weeks. CreComm prepares students for careers in advertising, public relations, media production and journalism. Social media is also a large focus in the program, which makes Mike a perfect fit for us.

We're excited to have Mike- and his moustache- back with our team!

Meet Monique!

If you Google me, you'll find my blog, which will link you to my Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Vimeo and YouTube channels. I've been a part of the social media revolution since 2004. My Myspace page was totally tricked out and when you loaded the page, The Tragically Hip's 'Springtime in Vienna' would start playing. Ever since those early days of social media, I've been taking part in the conversation, connecting and engaging with people from all over the world. You can imagine how excited I am to be Cruise Media Group's newest Social Media Strategist and Videographer!

Facebook Means Business

You have a Facebook fan page for your business, it's new, fun, and at times, it's oh-so-overwhelming. Before every update you question yourself; "Am I using my Facebook fan page to its full potential?"

When using Facebook, a balance of engagement with your audience and brand awareness is key to success.  Whether you're a retailer, a hair salon, or an accountant, the practices are similar.Constantly asking your audience to 'share' your posts, 'like' your comments, or asking questions hoping for a comment  may be more harm than good. Instead, balance them out. Talk about your industry, provide education, and ask engaging questions to create a response. Make Social Media about your audience.  

The Power Of The Pin - For Business!

At first we at Cruise Media Group were hesitant "pinheads."  Understand that working in the business of Social Media means that we hear about "the next Facebook" every other week.  We usually wait a few weeks to see if things stick before we invest any of our time or resources into it (cough cough Google+)  After a few months Pinterest become un-ignorable.  Mashable and all the news outlets were blowing up about it, in addition to several of our clients became interested in exploring its use for their business. With 10.4 million users since inception, Pinterest became the fastest growing Social Media site in history.

Join Our Team! Web Designer/Developer

We want a web person that gets this excited!

Do you dream in HTML, write programs between commercials or knock out a website while brushing your teeth.  If so, then Cruise Media Group is looking for you!  We are a dynamic, growing company looking to add a part-time contract web developer/designer to our team.  Projects will include websites and programming.  Please email your resume and portfolio to jenna@cruisemediagroup.com 

Don't Fake It Till You Make It

In High School the most popular kids were considered to be the ones with the most friends.  The introvert dungeons and dragon lover didn't even stand a chance.  The digital revolution has presented a whole new popularity contest to be won, online.  Social Media networks like Facebook conveniently show exactly how many "friends" someone has,  or in a businesses case, "fans."  But don't worry just yet, similar to most things in life, you can "fake it till you make it."

"I want YOU, to follow ME"

Facebook has stated that it believes, "there are now more than 83 million illegitimate accounts on the social network." This encompasses duplicate, pet (yes, my cat has one), and fake accounts used for spamming etc. From the seedy depths of the Social Media underbelly has emerged a new type of company that offers users Facebook and Twitter  followers all for mere dollars per thousand.  Celebrities, businesses and public figures have been outed for using such services to gain insta-popularity.  Mitt Romney is one of the recently accused whose Twitter account suspiciously grew overnight.  Information arose that claimed 1 in 4 of every new Romney followers had never even sent a Tweet.

This brings us back to one of the most important lessons we preach to our clients.  It's not about how many people "like" you,  it's about how many people "care" about you.  What's the point of having hundreds or thousands of un-engaged followers?  It's better to have 100 followers that interact, like, and care about your business than 1,000 that don't.

For more reading material on either of these subjects check out these great articles:

- Facebook & Illegitimate Accounts - BBC News
- Buying Twitter Followers - Fast Company

Written by: Jenna, Marketing Manager

Video = #Winning

The Cruise Media Group team are big believers in video content.  Why read it when you can watch it?  Video is the most effective way to get your message across or tell your story through social networks.  We really liked this article published by Fast Company on "Why Short-Form Video Is The Future Of Marketing", written by Kerrin Sheldon, so we have shortened and posted for you.

"If you have used the Internet in the past three years, chances are you have watched an online video. Video is everywhere. Our friends post funny cat videos on our timeline. Our coworkers pass along inspirational messages about success. Our favorite brands showcase their products in inventive ways. Nearly every site you visit has a video displayed in some form. As a result, video has rocketed in viewership--and there's no sign of it slowing down.

Enter: Cheezy Stock Photo of Couple Watching Vids

Here are 5 reasons why online video will soon dominate your time spent on the web, and why if you're a marketer, you can use video to propel your business forward."

1. More and more users are consuming their video entertainment online 

Study after study after study shows that more people are using the internet to consume video. In April 2012, ComScore reported that the average viewer watched nearly 22 hours of video in a single month. Most likely, those 22 hours were broken into many short-form videos, each being watched for just a few minutes at a time. The market is moving more toward catering to the Facebook generation's attention span--quick videos that are aimed to inspire, provoke, or excite. Likewise, the viewing experience on tablets devices such as the iPad make short-form content even more enjoyable. Apps, especially in the travel realm, are using HD video to engage audiences. Desktop and laptop viewers and tablet audiences continue to consume more and more short-form video--and marketers are seeing a big opportunity arise.

2. Marketers are using video to engage social media audiences

If you truly want to measure a trend's staying power and rising popularity, there's one metric that almost never fails. Can you make money from it? If the answer is yes, and there is a lot of opportunity to do so, then you can bet that it will stick around for some time. With online video that is definitely the case. Brand marketers have found great ways to engage audiences and create brand loyalists through online video, especially through their Facebook brand pages

I predict the next 5-10 years will be huge for video marketing online. Brands are moving further away from direct advertising, whose metrics that are hard to calculate, and into original video content--content that is created not to sell but to engage. They tell a story and they create brand loyalty. The days of direct consumer advertising is dwindling, and the advent of marketing through storytelling has arrived. This will propel online video even more into the world of serious profits.

3. Barriers to entry are low

Be a storyteller! Like this guy

With the barriers to entry continually being broken down with advances in technology, filmmakers now have the ability to create content--all in beautiful HD--for a much lower price tag than ever before. DSLRs, with the Canon 5D, 7D, and 60D leading the charge, have evolved into amazing filmmaking machines. While shooting and editing a professional-grade video still takes a good amount of skill and experience, and perhaps this alone will help keep the market from being too saturated, it is now easier than ever to teach yourself to create the next viral hit.

With that being said, there are still a few more barriers to entry. To create truly high-quality content, you must be a storyteller. You must be able to pull together a large selection of shots and content and pare it down into a manageable short-form video that will engage an audience. 

4. Quality is expanding quickly

To expand on the previous point, the advent of high-quality equipment at a reasonable price means that more potential storytellers are getting their shot at creating videos. Before, the sheer price and other barriers to entry meant that there was a very small portion of the population who could even be in the field. Now, with it being much easier to afford to even make videos, there is more opportunity for younger talent to enter the market. 

Vimeo and Youtube are also amazing teaching grounds, with tons of professional how-to and DIY videos. Likewise, sites like No Film School are giving independent filmmakers access to some of the best tips and tricks on the web, making at-home learning easier than ever. 

5. There are plenty of avenues for dissemination

Everyone knows YouTube and it continues to dominate the market. But unless you're a professional musician or are looking to score the new huge viral video showcasing your friends firing off bottle rockets from a made-at-home cannon, there are plenty of other places to showcase your videos. As mentioned above, Vimeo is the finest collection of artistic videographers on the web. Without outwardly deleting poor-quality content, Vimeo's homepage and search results make it easy to find awesome content and avoid the endless amounts of useless crap that often plague the YouTube experience. Along the same lines, Pinterest's new video feature gives curators great opportunities to pin videos to their boards. Even more so than Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest has created a sharing experience so simple and effective, it makes the potential or virility even higher. 

Kerrin is the co-founder of the new travel documentary site Humanity.TV. He is a self-taught filmmaker and photographer with a passion for adventure. Follow him on Twitter and likeHumanity.TV on Facebook for inspiring travel videos and photos.

Posted by Jenna - Marketing Manager @ Cruise Media Group

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Photo Sites

It's no surprise that photo's tend to the be the most shareable, likeable, engaging type of dynamic content. Whether you like your photo's vintage, tagged, or edited, there are tons of photo sharing sites to choose from.  Here is a run down of the biggest and best.

Flickr: Owned by Yahoo and claims to be, "the best online photo management and sharing application in the world."  Flickr offers mass organization and labelling tools as well as upgrade options that include endless storage space.  It has 80 million unique visitors and the site hosts 6 billion images.  You can edit your photos, create groups, comment, like and more within the Flickr photo community.

Instagram: is a photo sharing app recently acquired by Facebook.  The photo sharing program lets users take a photo, apply a digital filter to it and then share it on a variety of Social Media sites.  One billion photos have been taken with the app, and Instagram gains one new user every second.  The app uses Twitter type lingo and tools for search such as hashtags # and @ mentions.

Picasa:  Owned by Google and integrated with Google+.  Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, plus an integrated photo-sharing website.  Over 7 billion photos are currently shared on the site.

Pinterest: is a virtual pinboard that lets you organize and share beautiful things you find on the web.  Users can upload their own pictures or install the Pinterest tool bar to "pin" items from websites. The site has 10.4 million users and growing.  It's integration with other Social Media sites make it easy to share and connect with your friends.

Contact us if you'd like to start sharing your businesses photos, and let us know if there's any other photo sites that you like to use.

Written by: Jenna Boholij - Marketing Manager 

Social Media Marketing VS. Traditional Marketing

Traditional Marketing OR Social Media Marketing.  Some business owners are under the mis-conception that a choice has to be made.  Instead think of it as Traditional Marketing AND Social Media.  On one hand you have a company who understands the power and reach of Social Media and dumps their entire marketing budget into Social Media management, ads, designs etc.  On the other hand you have a company who still believes Social Media is just a passing trend and continues to place their dollars into traditional advertising such as newspaper, radio and television.  At Cruise Media Group we advise our clients to meet somewhere in the middle.  Keep doing the the things traditionally that have worked for your business, but also allocate funds to support a Social Media presence.  

Which way should you go?

Consider this:  Social Media should be the call to action for all of your traditional advertising.  For example,  all print ads should have your Social Media icons, and all radio advertising should direct listeners to your Facebook & Twitter pages.  If you can direct all of the traffic from your traditional advertising into your Social Media,  you've captured them in your networks.  Once they're in your network they have made a commitment to be updated consistently on your company, products and services.  Now what's that worth to you?

If you're interested in ideas on how you can marry Traditional Marketing & Social Media Marketing,  contact us and we can help . 

A few ideas to leave you with:

• Direct radio and television ads to your Facebook & Twitter 
• All marketing material should contain your Social Media icons (even your business cards!)
• If you're a retail location put up a poster on site to raise awareness of your Social Media
• Have newspaper ads drive traffic to a Facebook or Twitter content
• Have videos that you can email to clients that describe your products, services and company

Written by Jenna,  Marketing Manager at Cruise Media Group 

Hooked on the Book

I don’t want to freak anybody out, but it has come to my attention that there is a new epidemic sweeping our society. It affects everyone and has the potential to ruin lives. It distorts and distracts youth, encompasses and engulfs professionals, and conflicts and confuses the elderly. If not acknowledged and treated this addiction can grow to astronomical levels, making rehabilitation futile. 

A dude from Norway

I am of course talking about Facebook, and thanks to some science dudes in Norway we now have a way to identify this condition. If you think you may have a problem, ask yourself these questions and pray to the Internet it’s not to late.

Do you spend time thinking about Facebook when not near your computer or phone?

(Ex- thinking about witty status updates while having sex or playing sports.)

Are you constantly compelled to use Facebook more and more to ensure social media supremacy?

(Ex- posting multiple self shot cell phone pictures throughout the night to prove how many people you can annoy in real life as well as online.)

Do you use Facebook to forget about personal problems?

(Ex- someone hurt your feelings? You can afford to lose a friend, Facebook says I still have like 1,000.)

Are other people telling you to chill when it comes to your Facebook activity?

(Ex- Are you the first to like and comment on the most arbitrary updates, showing people you’re easily amused and therefore not that intelligent.) 

Maybe just one more self portrait...

Do you become restless when not using Facebook?

(Ex- unable to get through your own dinner without obsessing about what your ex- girlfriend’s best friend had for dinner.)

Has using Facebook had a negative impact on your job/school/life?

(Ex- if you’re reading this blog currently unemployed and not in school, you messed up and need to get your priorities straight or just adjust your privacy settings.)

So you be the judge, do you have a problem, or can you quit anytime? That being said, please continue to like us on Facebook, spend all of your valuable time soaking in all our valuable information, topical content and pictures of cute dogs in real world situations.

-Jeremy, Social Media Strategist

Need For Speed

Let's get going!

On Feb 1, Facebook filed a Registration Statement with the United Stated SEC, a necessary step leading up to their eventual IPO. This document included a letter from Mark Zuckerberg that outlined the five core values for how Facebook is run. In what he calls “The Hacker Way”, Mark explains how one of these values is speed. 

The “10 Things” that Google recognizes as their core principles also share an affinity for speed. Google’s philosophy, written in 1999, states that being fast is always better and works continuously to make their software faster. The more efficient their pages and platforms can be, the happier the user will be.

The Takeaway

There is a clear lesson to be learned by these two Internet giants. When it comes to business, speed is crucial. It’s better to boldly seize opportunities and then wait to perfect things. Release models and products as soon as possible and then make improvements through iterations. Betas are perfect for this. When Google releases a beta version of a new product, users understand that the software is 99% functional, but not polished. Feedback from users helps to catch bugs and requires far less resources that would traditionally go into testing.

Big Changes to Facebook Brand Pages

Three things in life are certain; death, taxes and Facebook changes.  Facebook will automatically convert all Facebook pages to the new Facebook Timeline design on March 30, 2012

We've summarized the major changes and how they will affect your company Facebook page.  

The Truth About Blogs

Not a Blog

What is a Blog?  I know it sounds like something you'd find stuck to your shoe,  but it actually refers to a type of online journal.  The word "Blog" originates from the word "Weblog" which are a type of website maintained by someone that produces regular entries of commentary, graphics, video etc.

There are millions of Bloggers around the world, writing about everything from music, food, first dates, and anything else you can imagine.  Many companies have started Blogging for their business.  Why would they do this you ask? Why do WE do this?