“It doesn’t matter how many Facebook fans you have.  It matters how many people are talking about your brand.”

NY Life’s Social Media AVP, Gregg Weiss, believes you can measure social media. 

First, companies need to get people talking about them, in a positive way.    Benchmark existing, relevant conversations online then have your company begin participating. Once you get the conversations going,  you can measure the impact by analyzing:

1.  How many people are actively talking about your company/brand?

     o  Utilize Facebook’s “people talking about” metric to help you measure conversations.
     o  Example metric: NY Life had 116,000 fans, 2,800 conversations going on and 2.4% of fans participating.

2.  What are people saying?  Do the comments, and the tone, indicate they think well of your company/brand?

     o Example metric: 1 Billion positive impressions about your company.

Collaboration is a great thing!  Recently LANE PR client, Burgerville, teamed up with The Brian Grant Foundation and local singer/songwriter Rob Barteletti to present “Shakers Sessions,” a compilation CD benefiting the Brian Grant Foundation.

The album was created by Barteletti, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2002. Wanting to make a benefit album for Parkinson’s patients, Barteletti recruited 12 Northwest vocalists to record the songs he wrote for the CD including Storm Large, Pete Droge, and Mike Coykendall.

Burgerville’s CEO Jeff Harvey has always had a personal passion for music and rallied the Burgerville team to be the distributor for “Shakers Sessions.” 

Together, Burgerville, the Brian Grant Foundation, Barteletti and Portland’s music community pooled their time, talent, energy and most of all passion for music and supporting the community to make a great CD and a difference for those with Parkinson’s disease.

And of course LANE PR was there to make sure the media captured the launch party including KGW’s Joe Smith who interviewed the CD’s producer, Rob Stroup and CD creator Barteletti.

In the spirit of the Halloween holiday, the LANE team coordinated an event hosted at the historic Heathman Hotel in Portland.

The hotel invited 20 children from Martin Luther King elementary school for a Halloween book reading in its library.

The little pre-kindergartners dressed up in their Halloween costumes for the reading and ate candy and treats while they listened to stories read by Carol Gardner, author and creator of Zelda Wisdom, a line of children’s books and greeting cards honoring English bulldog star Zelda. The Heathman donated a book for each child, as well as Halloween treat bags.

To add to the fun, Gardner brought two of Zelda’s “understudies” to the event, Otis and Lil Zelda, to play with the children, and to celebrate the hotel’s long-standing pet-friendly tradition. The hotel holds a bronze sculpture honoring of Zelda at its front entrance, generously donated by Banfield, The Pet Hospital® in 2010.

The kids, costumes, doggies and Carol were a great delight, and a fun way to get us all in the Halloween spirit!

With the weather turning chilly in the North East and West, it was a welcomed escape for some of the LANE staff to head to South Florida for a client event last week. 

We were met with rain, but we weren’t about to let that get us down or deter our excitement for the Neighborhood Night party in Hollywood, Fla, to celebrate the grand opening of the new Save-A-Lot food store in the area. 

The neighborhood was a buzz about the store due to street teams dropping off nearly 3,000 bags of groceries to residents in the community, and we were able to drum up additional enthusiasm through grocery deliveries to the local TV and radio stations. 

We arrived at the store on the morning of the event and got right to work, blowing up festive Save-A-Lot balloons and dispersing them throughout the store.  We set up tables with sign up sheets, entry forms for a chance to win a year’s worth of groceries – what a great prize!! – and raffle tickets for drawings throughout the night.

As we neared 5pm, the band was tuned up and ready to play, the sampling stations were prepped and ready to serve, and the line of people began to accumulate outside the store, anxiously awaiting the opening. 

Throughout the night from 5-8pm we welcomed a staggering 1,612 people into the store and everyone had a great time eating, dancing and talking.  We were thrilled to be able to donate $5,000 to Feeding South Florida, a local chapter of Feeding America and were moved by the inspiring words the Director of Development shared with the crowd about how this donation will help the community.

The overwhelming response was excitement and gratitude and everyone couldn’t wait to come back with their reusable tote bags (given as gifts) the next day for the grand opening when they could shop till they dropped.

The event was deemed a success by LANE, the Save-A-Lot staff and the client alike.  We are excited for the same successful response in Port St. Lucie, FL in a few weeks!

-Kristen S, Kristen R, Jamie and Whitney – the Hollywood, FL Save-A-Lot Team

Last Monday, I was lucky enough to score an invite to a fashion show as part of New York Fashion Week.  LANE PR’s client, Sexy Hair, was on hand at Project Runway Alum Althea Harper’s Spring 2012 Show at NYC’s Stone Rose Lounge to create stunning, unkempt hair in line with Spring’s hair trends. 

The backstage was abuzz with models and stylists, while the Sexy Hair team live blogged to their loyal consumers on social media channels like Facebook and twitter—even streaming a live feed to their website!  Check out some of the beautifully unkempt styles, directly from the runway: