On Sunday, teams of big-league social media strategists and techies will gather for what is being hailed as the Super Bowl of social media showdowns.

The event? Well, the Super Bowl, of course.

With 150,000 people converging on downtown Indianapolis, Ind. for the game, the NFL saw the need for the first ever Super Bowl Social Media Command Center. The group will use search tools and analytics to help fans with everything from parking to finding things to do in Indianapolis before the game. This is exciting news for the profession of social media as it highlights the ever-increasing importance of our role in the communications mix.

“We’re kind of breaking new ground here so we don’t know the exact numbers yet of what we’ll be dealing with, but we should be able to provide that after the game to other cities that have to deal with these types of issues,” said Taulbee Jackson, CEO of Raidious, the agency managing the hub. “I think a lot of brands will start to see a need for something like this.”

The Super Bowl may be getting its first social media command center, but CurrentMarketing has been providing these types of services for our clients for well over three years. While the Super Bowl’s effort certainly takes the cake for most ethernet cables ever required in the wireless era (over a mile) and a certified “shit ton” of screen space (150 square feet of networked screen space), we think our team’s capabilities match up well with the services being provided for the big game.

Here is our pre-game analysis breakdown of CurrentMarketing’s social media capabilities vs. that of the Super Bowl’s Social Media Command Center.

Monitoring Conversation
In the weeks leading up to the game, the Super Bowl crew will be monitoring the conversation for 15 hours a day. That’s mighty impressive, but don’t award the points to them too quickly. Our CurrentMarketing social media team knows no hours. With wireless capability we respond to our clients’ customers as the conversation happens, not only within business hours. Actually, social conversation mostly happens in the hours before and after work. So guess when we do most of our talking?

Sophisticated Searching
The search methods the Super Bowl team members are using allows them to find complaints of all kinds. They’re diving deep into an area where keywords are the name of the game. A spokesperson for the Super Bowl team points out that fans may not Tweet out “Where can I find parking,” but will likely say, “Parking sucks.” Their team will then respond to help. This is extremely similar to the services our CurrentMarketing team provides, not only searching for a brand’s name online, but also for users who may be interested. For example, if a user Tweets they are looking for a place to find a margarita, we may point them in the direction of a nearby client’s restaurant for a margarita special.

One mile of ethernet cable, 150 square feet of screens
OK, we punt on this one.

Sentiment and Brand Monitoring
While it hasn’t been mentioned as a part of this command center, we’re sure the team will be recording the comments and sentiments from game-goers and not just responding to them. This is one of the most powerful moves we have at in the CurrentMarketing social media playbook. We track what consumers are saying about our clients and their competition. And this is not just on Twitter, but accounts for all online mentions – meaning we track blogs, forums, news sources, mirco-media and even personal Facebook profile mentions.

Tool Belt
To handle the massive influx of monitoring and engaging, the Super Bowl Command Center is employing a team of 50 and outfitting them with top notch enterprise-level social media management software. Well we may be 48 bodies short of 50, but our team of two are masters of the same level of sophisticated software. That’s right, our social media management capabilities are on the same playing field as that of the Super Bowl’s Social Media Command Center.

Work Space
The 50 man Super crew will be working from a 2,800 square foot space in downtown Indianapolis. That’s certainly a lot of room, but we’re fairly certain we get the points on this one, too. At our immediate disposal we have two fully-interactive meeting spaces, a full photo studio (just because it’s a photo for Facebook doesn’t mean we can’t make it look good!), a courtyard that makes an excellent outdoor office on nice days, a very spacious social media office, and one entirely-too-comfortable couch in our Geek Suite’s lounge area. Oh, and did we mention our close proximity to The Blind Pig? And constantly expanding offerings of NuLu?

So, for those who can’t make a call without instant replay, here’s our recap:

Monitoring Conversation: Quarterback sneak for a touchdown, CurrentMarketing
Sophisticated Searching: Punt return for touchdown, CurrentMarketing
Excessive ethernet cable: Punt to Super Crew.
Sentiment & Brand Monitoring: Touchdown & 2 point conversation, CurrentMarketing
Tool Belt: Touchdown Super Crew, Call reversed (too many men on the field).
Work Space: On side kick by CurrentMarketing. Converted to touchdown.

We may not be monitoring the Super Bowl, but we can run with the best of them.

- Angela Trumbaturi and Brad Luttrell

A study from Ypulse, a youth-focused research firm, finds that 46 percent of college students watch TV on a television set most of the time, and the other 54 percent are watching online or on a mobile device. The study also found that more than 80 percent of college students said they can’t live without music, while less than a third said they couldn’t live without TV.

More college students are watching television online because their social lives take precedent over watching their favorite programs. With night classes, parties, studying and exams, minimal time is left to watch a breadth of television programming. Instead of accommodating their social lives to their favorite shows, they watch their favorite shows online whenever it’s convenient. However, high-schoolers are less likely to view programming online because their schedules are far less demanding and they are usually home from their extra-curriculars in the evening in time for primetime programming.

It’s no surprise that these young people can’t live without music.  Music is a huge variable in self-discovery and reflects their personality and how they are perceived by their peers, which is most important in those teenage years.  Music is something that students take with them wherever they go, whether it be on their commute to school, while waiting for class to begin, or just hanging out with friends.

TV is a less involved form of entertainment and they don’t have the ability to customize a television channel with all of their favorite shows like they can do on their iPods with their favorite artists and songs.

The study doesn’t state that college students are not watching TV, but how they’re watching is definitely changing with the times.

For a media buyer, this information can be useful when reaching college students. With the advancement of streaming on the web, thru mobile devices and game consoles, the ever changing media landscape has provided us with other avenues to impact this audience.

It is our job as our client’s strategic partner is to engage consumers with their products.

There are several ways of engaging a consumer, however there is one place that is most important….

The website.  Whenever I am in need of information I always go straight to the website and I think most people use websites for the exact same thing.  So, it is the perfect opportunity to “win” that customer.

But, most websites do not warrant customer interaction and ultimately engage them as they should.

In a recent article written by Daniel Alves, Design Director for 352 Media Group, Alves outlines 9 ways to improve upon this such thing.  A few things stuck out to me, that I think often slip our minds.

Make a promise. He talks about the importance of telling users that their information is safe, that it won’t be shared with any third party and the importance of placing this promise right next to the submit button.  This message eases one’s fear and makes them more likely to provide their info.

Have some fun. Spice up your website with a little humor and give your customers a laugh.  First of all who doesn’t like to laugh?!? Secondly, laughter eases the mind and makes you feel more relaxed and therefore more applicable to providing information and wanting to be apart of the product.

Take a look at the article?  What do you think about his 9 ideas?

Color – When I first heard of this app, I thought it was going to be awesome. Imagine it: you have a party and invite a bunch of friends. You open the app, and take a lot of pictures. After the party, you get a URL where you can see all the pictures you took AND everyone else who was taking pictures through the app at that time and location, no uploading required. This was such a fabulous idea to me, but it just never picked up. I have no idea why. I just visited Color.com to see that now the app is a “live broadcast through your phone” which could be neat, but is not as neat as what it used to be.

Rugged Maniac 5K – Marathons, 5Ks and other fundraiser races have been really popular within the last few years, so I guess it was only a matter of time before someone decided to host a bigger and badder race, with a Navy SEAL obstacle course built in to it. It seemed like a fun challenge, so I ran the “Rugged Maniac 5K” with my friends. But when I realized the event was hosted by a for-profit company and none of the money went to charity, I left the race feeling extremely cold and uncomfortable. Or maybe it was the pool of icy mud I was forced to swim through.

ReadyMade Magazine – This hip DIY magazine has been providing household tips and how-tos for ten years, but it was decided by parent company Meredith in June of this year that further publication would come to a sudden and complete halt. It’s tough times for the magazine industry, so I guess I’m not shocked, but I will definitely miss the great advice and cool projects I learned thanks to the mag, including how to make a Christmas wreath out of medicine bottles and the smartest way to store bedsheets (fold the sheets and put them INSIDE the pillowcase of that set. Brilliant!) Getting an apathetic note from the publisher and a copy of “Better Homes and Gardens” as a substitute was a huge disappointment.

Google + – The truth is, I still don’t even know how or why Google+ was supposed to be better than Facebook. That’s because I can’t peel myself away from Facebook long enough to use it. I want to believe that Google’s product is superior, but since none of my friends are jumping off the Facebook bridge, I don’t want to either.

Sorry to be such a downer, everybody. If you want to cheer me up, go read a “Best of 2011” blog and forward it to me!

If you’ve ever been to a capabilities presentation with a top publisher site, you’re all too familiar with the claims that they have the most unique monthly visitors, have the highest number of monthly page views and offer the most prestigious site list.  Even more a seasoned buyer, there is a lot of data to consider and the comparisons are not always apples to apples.  So, how can you rate one site above the others?

comScore, a leader in internet audience measurement, conducts monthly performance audits and publishes the results.   The results are available on a national level, or you can subscribe to their Media Metrix service, to further break down the results geographically or demographically.  This is a great tool, which levels out the playing field and analyzes based on the same information.

I thought it would be interesting to share the October 2011 results, since some of us don’t regularly have the ability to look at these rankings.

The top 10 US properties are: Glam Media (10), Wikimedia (9), Turner Digital (8), Ask Network (7), Amazon Sites (6), AOL (5), Facebook (4), Microsoft Sites (3), Yahoo! Sites (2) and Google Sites (1).

There are a few pieces of data, that I find interesting, that I’d like to point out.

First, are the retail sites including #12 Apple (79,942,999 unique visitors), #23 Wal-Mart (45,203,000 unique visitors), #46 Target Corporation (27,086,000 unique visitors).  I expect traffic to these three sites to grow in November and December, as we approach the holiday season.

Several important social media sites are ranked highly as well, including #4 Facebook (166,000,000 unique visitors), #30 LinkedIn (35,732,000 unique visitors), #31 Twitter (34,809,000 unique visitors) and #40 MySpace (28,439,000 unique visitors).  MySpace is dead to a lot of people, but these site statistics prove otherwise, as it is alive and well, perhaps just targeting a different audience that the younger, early adopters.

It’s also notable to point out that WedMD and The Washington Post each jumped 5 positions from their previous locations in September.

Ratings like this give us a lot to consider in the marketing world.  For instance, if a company is hesitant about setting up a branded Twitter account, they may be convinced otherwise if they see just how much traffic the site generates.  Also, seeing how highly ranked Amazon is, could make a strong case for a bricks and mortar retail location to expand their offerings to a national target on Amazon.

Before I was a part of CurrentMarketing’s social media team, I was a photojournalist. As a photographer you think of photojournalism as changing the world one well composed frame at a time. I’ve been a part of some great storytelling, but as a freelancer it seemed more often than not I was standing at a ribbon-cutting with 20 other people, 15 of which were holding the ribbon and the other five were holding news cameras or microphones. I was ready for a change and a new challenge, and I certainly got that by joining CurrentMarketing’s team.

I had no agency experience, or any clue as to what I could expect at CurrentMarketing (besides dogs, lots of dogs). The biggest question was would I find advertising rewarding? It took me all of a week to figure out I loved working at CurrentMarketing – maybe even just a few days. Much of my time spent here has been learning the business as we go, and as my understanding of advertising grows, so does my passion for it.

Last year, we handled a campaign for one of our clients, Texas Steakhouse and Saloon, that I am very proud of and found incredibly rewarding. During the entire month of November we collected letters for US troops and the response was overwhelming. Hundreds of heart-felt letters began pouring into our office the following week. We received over two thousand total.

Part of our job was to review the letters. People of all ages sent us letters, from former servicemen and women who have been retired for decades to children who were barely old enough to write. The messages were always positive, and some tugged heavy on the heart strings.

“Come home soon, daddy,” was one that stuck out to me. The child signed their name and age – he was only five years old.

A retired naval officer prayed they have strength through the holidays, because he knew they were the toughest times when he was deployed years ago.

Some of the restaurant servers took time out of their busy schedule to say how much it means to them that the troops sacrifice so much.

Working on this project was a pleasure. Unlike turning in a photo from a crappy assignment and wondering whether or not anyone will even notice it, I know these letters will be appreciated. Service men and women will hold these letters and get to read these positive messages, and they will be thankful for them.

I’m thankful I work at a place that’s able to make things like this happen. I’ve loved every minute of working at CurrentMarketing, from the office dogs to our daily Jolt meeting. I feel like I’m building a rewarding (there’s that word again) career for myself, and I look forward to coming up with more projects like this for all of our clients and new challenges for myself.

First, lets define secondary research. Secondary sources refers to research that has already been collected and interpreted by others, including government agencies and trade associations. Secondary research is typically general in nature. Secondary research sources are very popular among researchers as they are inexpensive and help form preliminary hypothesis that might often lead to primary research. Primary research is focused and specific collected specifically engineered to answer a researcher’s question. For example, secondary research will tell you how much money consumers spent on watches, but not how much they’re willing to pay for the particular watch design your company has in mind. That would be a question answered only by primary research. Primary and secondary research are most effective when used in tandem. Secondary research lays the groundwork, while primary research fills in the gaps.

Now, a little advice on selecting sources for your secondary research. There is more to gathering secondary sources than just finding on-topic information. Good researchers must take into account all the variables about the source in question, including date, publication, author, potential biases and validity of the research cited. Failure to consider these elements can lead to key strategy flaws as the research used to support your assertions are not as reliable as first believed.

To help ensure that your research is reputable, ask yourself these questions before adding any source to your references page.

1. When was this research published?
A good rule of thumb is that any information older than five years is probably no longer valid. It is also consider the date of important events when evaluating sources. For example, research published during the economic recession might have a very different conclusion than similar research conducted just prior to the economic decline. Most importantly, ensure that you are using the most recent data available.

2. Who is behind the research?
While evaluating sources, it is important to be aware of the the people, companies and financial supporters of the research you might reference. Not only is this important to assess whether those parties are qualified, but also to identify any potential biases or ulterior motives in the data. For example, it might not be a good idea to cite gun statistics from a trade organization that opposes the Second Amendment. This conflict of interest might skew the results of the research. As researchers is important to do a little background research on the responsible parties to ensure the data is as objective as possible.

3. Where was the research published?
The third variable to evaluate is where the research appeared. Knowing the publication, journal or website where the study originally appeared can either add to or detract from the information’s relevance and validity. That being said, it is easy to understand why research appearing in an academic journal might be considered more reliable than similar data originally published on a blog. In the case of source evaluation, the medium often a glimpse into the quality of the research. Academic journals have a rigorous peer-review process to ensure that the research published is credible. Stats you might see discover on a friend’s blog, however, might have lower standards. It might also be beneficial to consider the audience of the publications in which the research appears. This will help you, as a researcher, assess whether the data is applicable to the readers of your research.

Are you sick and tired of playing victim to Facebook’s nefarious, ever-changing privacy practices? Are you exhausted from all of those hours spent trying to get reoiriented with Facebook’s interface after another zany redesign? Have you had it with those tiny ads on each side of your screen, ruining the serenity of your social networking experience?

Well friends, it’s time to break free from the chains of Facebook and trade that Farmville plantation for emancipation! It’s time to realize your long-oppressed dream of absolute social networking freedom! It’s time to sign up for Unthink!

Then again, maybe not.

Unthink is a newly launched (and horribly named) social network aimed at Facebook haters, Google Plus haters and haters in general. Unthink’s big selling point is that it gives users absolute control over what personal information they share and with whom they share it, so you must no longer withstand those keyword ads mocking you from each side of the screen.

In tune with its theme of “social networking freedom,” Unthink users are given a deed to a profile that consists of three distinct streams, each tailored for different audiences. There’s a stream for the general public, a stream for friends and a stream for businesses and brands. Each stream is closed by default, and users have tight control over who gets access.

Though all of this social-networking-freedom talk is well and good, having spent the past week noodling through the beta, I’ve come to the conclusion that Unthink is well built, well intentioned and well on its way to failure. Why? Because Unthink has positioned its brand based on the falsehood that people hate Facebook when clearly, they don’t.

In fact, when it comes right down to it, people love Facebook. Just think about it: If Facebook shut down tomorrow, there would be panic in the streets, huge lines at gas stations, a run on milk and bread at the local grocery. Hordes of workers would resume being productive at their jobs. Absolute pandemonium!

If upstart Unthink hopes to compete against titans like Facebook and Google Plus, they must portray themselves as the place to be instead of just attacking the competition. Vilifying Facebook simply isn’t going to work. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to Rethink the name.

This week at our monthly Spotlight™ meeting, our Guru of all things Account Services, Nick Ising, turned us on to something that I didn’t know was missing from my social media existence… a service like Pinterest, but for men. For those who don’t know, Pinterest is “a vision board-styled social photo sharing website and app where users can create and manage theme-based image collections.” Basically, you post things that are cool for others to see. With Pinterest, that usually means crafts, recipes and Twilight photos. It seems like every woman I know talks about how addictive this site is, and until now, I didn’t really get it.

Which brings us to Gentlemint.com, which is basically the Butch version of Pinterest for guys. Where Pinterest has cute outfits and interior decorating, Gentlemint has unbreakable sledge hammers and places to put your scotch.

While this site is still in it’s infancy, (I got “Jim” as a user name.) this site has real promise, at least if the buzz around Pinterest is any indication. It is definitely worth following for a while to see how it grows. Hopefully there is a smartphone app in their future. Guys, if you are listening, I know a great agency that could help you out with that.

It has become a tradition for me to begin each new year at CurrentMarketing by writing a blog post with some resolutions to make the new year more productive than the last. In 2011, I chose three resolutions aimed at all ad agency employees. For 2012, I thought I would put together resolutions for the market researchers of the world.

Now I’ll admit, I am still relative new to the research game. I still have a lot to learn about the business, but sometimes a fresh perspective can benefit even the most seasoned veterans. With that in mind, take a look at three resolutions that will make 2012 your most productive year to date.

1. Be A Consultative Researcher
This past October, I attended the American Marketing Association’s Research and Strategy Summit. In several of the seminars, research executives from various industries all expressed the importance of researchers also serving as business consultants. In the new economy, clients want value. That means that not only want researchers who can dazzle them with regression models and pie charts, but also provide meaning to data. Strive to become a consultative researcher in 2012. Tell a story with the data. Clients will find more value in a two page summary with actionable items than a manual explaining every table and graph in the study.

To help you become a consultative researcher, spend extra time learning about a client’s business. Familiarize yourself with their products, competitors and the industry in which they operate. Doing so will allow you to better interpret information resulting in many more projects from your clients.

2. Strive For Simplicity
As researchers, we all have a tendency to be long-winded. Even when presented with simple research questions, we often produce too much information for clients. Presenting a client with too much information can cause confusion or doubt about the results. It is better to keep information both simple and direct. Every researcher wants to prove just how much time they spent on the project to the client, but trust me when I say that no client will question your dedication when you provide them a short, and direct, answer to the research question.

There are several strategies that can help you produce succinct research, including being choosier about source selection and using the simplest language possible. Also, be sure to read all sources thoroughly. Obviously this takes more time, but doing so will lead to more accurate conclusions.

3. Educate Your Coworkers
Most market researchers do not work at large research firms. Instead the majority of market research professionals work in a small department housed within companies big and small. Many companies do not fully utilize their research department only because they are not aware of all the services that research can provide to the company. If you were to examine the most successful corporations in any industry, I would bet they all have a strong commitment to research and understand the value it provides. That being said, take time in 2012 to educate your coworkers about your capabilities.

A great way to educate coworkers is to hold short, fun seminars on a regular basis. Offer to buy everyone lunch. After all, research is not usually the most appealing subject for most people. This is also a great way for you to brush up on your presentation skills and to disprove the theory that all researchers are introverts.

As I said in my 2011 new year’s blog, feel free to add more resolutions at any time of the year. Be sure to write down and post your goals. Share resolutions with friends and coworkers as you will accomplish much more this way than if you keep them to yourself.

Have a safe and productive 2012!