Mediaboss Marketing

New YorkSocial media marketing is catching on in the highly regulated financial services industry, according to panelists who spoke Thursday at BtoB's NetMarketing Breakfast here.

While financial services companies are closely monitored by compliance departments in the use of social media and usually maintain centralized control over how employees engage socially, they're still finding ways to use social outreach, said Marty Willis, CMO at asset management company OppenheimerFunds.

We continue to think about a "digital-first' philosophy; it's one of the biggest changes we brought to the organization, said Willis, who joined the company as marketing chief three years ago. Willis said the company uses social media to reach out to the financial advisers who sell its products.

Blogs have been fantastic for us, Willis said. We have 51,000 people who are regularly viewing our blogs, which are distributed as short, digestible content.

OppenheimerFunds is active on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. To fuel the latter, the company has invested in a professional video studio in-house to record and present its portfolio managers as thought leaders.

People like videos that are short, snappy and entertaining, with an emphasis on graphics that come alive and move, Willis said. She said tweets and other content are approved on average in two minutes.

Kathleen Delaney, senior VP-marketing at risk management and insurance company Aon, said the company has invested heavily in podcasts, with a particular emphasis on the iPhone. The company drives engagement at events via social media and the use of mobile apps. Aon's weekly e-newsletters are sharable on social sites via a prominent forward button.

Since many risk managers are comfortable with more traditional forms of communications, Delaney said, The use of newsletters along with social helps bridge the "technical divide.'

Seth Brewer, director-social media at insurance company Hartford Financial Services Group, said financial services companies can't avoid social marketing. He said the Hartford found many of the independent insurance agencies that it works with have found success when carriers support products through social media.

But 82% of those agencies say too few carriers provide help to them in this way, Brewer said. He added that 13% of agencies say social assistance in promoting insurance products has influenced where business is placed.

See the original post here:
'BtoB's' NetMarketing panel: Financial services companies turning to social media marketing

SMX Social Media Marketing Super Early Bird rates the lowest offered expire tomorrow, Saturday, October 13. Register now.

Heres all you get:

Join us for SMX Social Media Marketing, December 5-6 in Las Vegas. See what past attendees have said.

Attend SMX Social Media Marketing for the insight and tactics you need to solve your challenges and take your social media efforts to the next level. Check out the agenda, including our dynamic keynotes from Twitters safety team lead Del Harvey, and Vic Gundotra, who heads up Google+.

Programmed by the editors of internet marketing blog Marketing Land, you can expect only the most relevant content and qualified speakers at SMX Social Media Marketing. We guarantee it.

Register today for just $1295, a $400 savings compared to on-site rates. Dont wait. Prices increase end of day Saturday!

Want to send a team? Check out our attractive group rates and save an additional 10-20%. One-day All Access and Workshop passes are also priced at their lowest.

Register now!

Need more info? Visit these helpful links:

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

More:
2 Days Left to Save $400 on SMX Social Media Marketing

Social media agency Maximize Social Media LLC announced its social media marketing program today for Lasik surgeons, providing marketing support for Lasik practices nationwide. The firm will offer complete management of top social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) October 12, 2012

Lasik practices have a tremendous opportunity to generate new business and referrals through social media. Sites like Facebook give Lasik practices a platform to connect with prospects and clients, and generate referral business. Additionally, happy patients can post their success stories on social media, which generates outstanding word-of-mouth exposure, said Craig Collins, Sr. Vice President of Maximize Social Media LLC.

Maximize will also optimize the Google Plus Local listing for local businesses to achieve Google page one ranking. This enables businesses like Lasik practices to gain visibility in front of potential clients that are actively searching Google for the services in their local area.

Maximize Social Media provides full social media management services in over 50 different verticals. The agency will fully integrate all aspects of social media for businesses that will find it more affordable to outsource the management rather than hire additional staff. Maximize provides both ad management, which will allow the businesses to target specific demographics, as well as daily engagement by a dedicated social media manager.

Lasik pratices as well as their advertising agencies are invited to contact Maximize Social Media for a no obligation consultation at:

http://maximizesocialmedia.com/strategysession

About Maximize Social Media LLC

Maximize Social Media (http://maximizesocialmedia.com) is a leading provider of social media management services for clients in over 50 different verticals. With offices in Florida and Los Angeles, Maximize provides social media consulting and Facebook advertising management for clients in English speaking countries such as the US, Canada, and Australia. The company also features social media management outsourcing for busy social media mangers looking for additional assistance on a white label basis.

Chris McLaughlin, CEO Maximize Social Media LLC (866) 825-1357 Email Information

More here:
Lasik Social Media Marketing Program Offered by Social Media Agency Maximize Social Media LLC

THURSDAY, Oct. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Social media can be used to help convince young adults to use condoms to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, a new study finds.

Researchers enrolled online networks of friends who were randomly assigned to an intervention group or a "control" group.

The 942 participants in the intervention group signed up to "like" and receive news from Just/Us, a Facebook community created to promote sexual health. The site featured weekly discussions about topics such as condom use, talking with partners about sexual history, and how to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, there were daily updates in the form of video links, quizzes, blogs and discussion threads.

The 636 people in the control group, called 18-24 News, shared general news of interest to 18- to 24-year-olds.

Two months after taking part in the social networking groups, 68 percent of those in the Just/Us group reported using a condom the last time they had sex, compared with 56 percent of those in the 18-24 News group. The rate of condom use during sex in the previous two months was 63 percent in the Just/Us group and 57 percent in the 18-24 News group, the investigators found.

However, the effects seen in the Just/Us group faded over time and there were no differences between the two groups at the six-month follow-up, according to the report published in the November issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"The use of social media to influence sexual risk behavior in the short term is novel. It is a first step in considering how to reach the overwhelming numbers of youth online, and how to maximize approaches to technology-based interventions," lead investigator Sheana Bull, of the Colorado School of Public Health's University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said in a journal news release.

The author of an accompanying commentary, Dr. Nathan Cobb, from the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the American Legacy Foundation in Washington D.C., agreed that this use of social media was a step in the right direction. "For health-behavior change intervention designers, Facebook offers something unprecedented -- direct access to an individual's social network, in real time, and without the need for tedious network enumeration by participants," he wrote.

"However, such approaches require multidisciplinary teams that include social media specialists, marketers, and software developers as equal partners in design and intervention development. Building such teams will undoubtedly require changes to traditional funding and development models, but the potential is too large to be ignored or minimized," Cobb added.

More information

Go here to read the rest:
Social Media Could Boost Condom Use, Study Suggests

By Jamie Lendino

Not feeling the cord-cutting craze? From live sports and 24-hour news to a vast array of premium channels, most Americans are staying with cable or satellite TV for now. The problem is, aside from the lack of la carte channel options, TV providers also make it exceptionally difficult to watch the programming you pay for from computers and mobile devices. Enter the venerable Slingbox, which since 2005 has made it easy to "place-shift" live TV and recorded DVR content, letting you watch it on any device over the Internet when you're away from home.

Now, after a four-year hiatus, Sling Media is back with the Slingbox 500 ($299.99 direct), its first consumer product since the Slingbox Pro-HD and the somewhat misguided SlingCatcher. With the 500, the Slingbox finally includes features many fans have been clamoring for, such as full 1080p streaming and Wi-Fi support. In an age of direct Internet streaming services, parts of the way the Slingbox 500 works are beginning to feel quite dated. But if you want to get the most out of your cable or satellite TV subscription, the Slingbox 500 remains a great way to stream live TV and recorded DVR content to any of your computers or mobile devices, at home or on the go.

Design, Connections, and SetupWith its twisted design, the Slingbox 500 looks kind of like an inspired piece of modern art. It's made entirely of matte black plastic with a textured finish that feels durable and scratch resistant.As a coworker commented, it's no longer flat on top, so people won't be putting stuff on top and watching their Slingboxes overheat, which used to happen with the older models.

In the package, you get lots of goodies. Aside from the Slingbox itself, there's a small remote control, an AC adapter, an HDMI cable, component and composite video cables, a pair of stereo RCA audio cables, an Ethernet cable, and a printed instruction manual.The HDMI port seems like an exciting addition at first, but thanks to encryption issues from the TV providers, it only passes through regular TV and basic cable channels like USA HD. To get around this problem, Sling Media recommends a simultaneous HDMI and component audio and video cable setup; I ended up testing with the component connection.

The Slingbox 500 also includes an internal IR blaster for controlling your cable-company-issued set-top box. This means you don't have to fiddle with the little plastic external one on a wire, as you did with older models. Sling Media says the blaster is strong enough to bounce off the walls and hit the sensor on the set-top box. If that doesn't work in your setup, the company still includes the old IR blaster on a wire in case you need it.

I tested the Slingbox 500 with a Dish Network Hopper DVR and a Samsung HDTV. From the back of the Dish Hopper, I ran both HDMI and the five component A/V cables from the output jacks to the inputs on the Slingbox 500. Then out from the Slingbox 500, I connected the existing HDMI cable (from the Dish Hopper) to the back of the TV. The Slingbox 500 took about two minutes to boot for the first time; it installed a software update during this time, which I assume was already on the Slingbox, because I hadn't yet connected it to a network.

You can connect to 802.11b/g/n networks on either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz channel. I added the Slingbox 500 to our test WPA2-encrypted 5GHz network without issue, and then picked up the new remote to control the Slingbox's new TV interface. After inputting my location and zip code, the unit scanned the connected inputs and asked about our service provider, for which I selected Dish New York. It already had the Dish Hopper in its set-top box database and loaded the appropriate remote control layout. I tested the programmed remote buttons as directed, and everything worked properly from the Slingbox remote. I had no problem bringing up the menu and channel guide, switching channels, and powering the Hopper off or onand that was without using the external blaster cable, and while standing in front of both devices.

More here:
Sling Media Slingbox 500