Social media, mobile apps and engagement were the hot topics for our followers this week. A blog post by Q’s own Bryan Cox on social networking fatigue was a big draw, and readers enjoyed Jeremiah Owyang’s take on integrating social media tools into your corporate website to keep it relevant to prospects and customers. Q’s tweeps also enjoyed articles we shared from Advertising Age and SmartBrief on the hottest mobile apps for the retail industry and the importance of creating meaningful relationships with your “fan” base.

1. Roadmap: Make Your Corporate Websites Relevant by Integrating Facebook, Google, MySpace, LinkedIn, or Twitter
by Jeremiah Owyang on Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang

As a follow up to a 2007 post on how irrelevant corporate websites could evolve, Jeremiah Owyang recently spent some time conducting research to measure how different social networks allow for integration with corporate websites and their assets.

Takeaway: It has become clear that one-way, outbound communication with customers and prospects is no longer enough. Companies must integrate consumer behavior on social networks into their corporate websites in order to remain relevant to customers and prospects, nurture meaningful relationships and build trust.

2. An App for That, Too: How Mobile Is Changing Shopping
by Natalie Zmuda with Advertising Age

Here at Q, there has been a lot of buzz around mobile apps and the doors they open for businesses when it comes to engaging consumers in new ways while they’re on the go. In this post, AdAge addresses six products to give retailers a reason to get as excited about the platform as we are.

Takeaway: As is the case with anything new, mobile apps present both opportunities and risks for businesses. The best approach is to embrace the technology and examine ways to make it work for you and your customers. If you choose to focus more on the risks involved in adopting a new platform than on the opportunities it presents, you will be left trying to catch up to early adopters in the future.

3. How can Starbucks build meaningful relationships with their millions of fans?
by Andy Sernovitz on SmartBlog on Social Media

Using Starbucks as a case study, SmartBrief’s Andy Sernovitz discusses an issue that brands large and small continue to struggle with in the age of new media – how do you translate fans and followers into new business?

Takeaway: Having an impressive number of followers, friends and fans across social media platforms means nothing if your customers and prospects aren’t truly engaged in a meaningful relationship with your brand.

Bryan Cox, Web Developer

I’ve gotten sick of it all – the tweeting, the Facebook status updates, even posting on blogs. And I’m not the only one. For many years now, web pundits have bandied about the phrase “Social Networking Fatigue”; the sheer number of social networks has increased exponentially over that same period, while improvements in technology have made the various sources more immediate, real-time and accessible to anyone with a mobile device. The glut of information at our fingertips is overwhelming, almost to the point of frustration.

Just as an example, not long ago I missed an important event in a good friend’s life – the birth of his daughter. Social networking on MySpace and Facebook got me back in touch with him after college, and we had been keeping each other updated on the goings-on of our lives — which is one of the primary draws of social networking. But on that particular day, I had over 300 status updates from the other 170 or so family members, college buddies and co-workers I follow, most of them about how drunk they had gotten the night before, or the new tattoo they were going to get, or requests to help them build some virtual farm or garden patch. So this one moment got lost in the noise for over a month.

According to the Facebook statistics site, the average user has 130 friends, has joined 13 groups and follows four fan pages per month. There are more than 60 million status updates per day and 5 billion pieces of new content each week. Twitter just recently topped the 1 billion tweets per month mark, with over 40 million tweets being generated each day. And newer networks are growing at an exponential rate: Google Buzz launched February 9th and two days later there were already 9 million posts and comments — with an average of 160,000 posts per hour. Google also reported over 200 mobile check-ins per minute.

There’s an engineering term called the “signal-to-noise ratio” (SNR), which has been adapted to describe the problems of social networking. “Signal” represents the pertinent information a user is interested in, and “noise” is the background chatter that signal may get lost within. The higher the amount of noise, the greater the chance of the signal being lost. And this is the crux of social networking fatigue – it has become too difficult for anyone to visually scan a raw feed of status updates and comments and then filter out the most pertinent ones to respond to.

This has become relevant to businesses, who, now more than ever, are trying to promote their brand to an interconnected online audience, only to find that user interest in following brands on social networks has dwindled. Automated tools are becoming more prevalent, with clients such as TweetDeck allowing us to filter out the noise, and users are beginning to trim down the number of tweeters they follow and the Facebook applications they use. Many brands have decided to forgo their initial social networking strategies and replace them with customized private social networks, perhaps with some integration with the more popular public social networks.

At Q, we see “social media fatigue” as an opportunity to help our clients and partners transition their social networking strategy and to concentrate the amount of signal available to their users in one place — filtered out from the noise that is the greater social networking cloud. By giving users the tools they need to get the message and respond without the signal getting lost, an organization can build a closer relationship with their overloaded online audience.

This Week’s Top Tweets is a new weekly post compiling the most popular articles shared each week through our @agencyQ Twitter handle. We tweet about what we do: digital marketing, technology, creative and engagement. We come across great content all the time and love to share interesting news and developments in the interactive space with our followers and fans.

To get in on the action, follow us! We’d love to connect with you.

1. Vancouver 2010’s Lost Opportunity
by David Reinhardt on The Next Web

David Reinhardt was a bit underwhelmed by the online presence for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, so he offered some great insight into how VANOC (Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games) could leverage social marketing and mobile tools to create a more interactive experience around the games.

Takeaway: Whether you’re planning an event as grand in scale as the Olympics or a small client seminar, new media tools provide endless possibilities to promote the event and engage attendees. Make sure you use them.

2. Twitter Statistics: The Full Picture
by Alex Wilhelm on The Next Web

If you’re as passionate about marketing and technology as we are, you’re probably used to seeing a constant stream of statistics for Twitter and its growth. With the frequent changes and the mixed messages they create, it can be difficult to understand the growth pattern for the platform and how it all fits together. Alex Wilhelm created a post with the latest and greatest stats for Twitter and what they all mean.

Takeaway: If you’re a Twitter detractor, you may want to rethink your stance on the platform in 2010.

3. How Social Is Too Social?
by David Armano on HBR: The Conversation

The technology world keeps buzzing with the many ways that businesses are trying to make the world more “social”. But when is it time to cry uncle? If you think social tools are getting out of hand, you’re not alone. In this blog post, David Armano, a Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital, explains that not everything is better with friends, fans or followers.

Takeaway: Armano’s final sentence says it all: “As social technologies progress, valuable and meaningful engagements will become more important than just connecting with friends.”

Washington, D.C. - agencyQ, (formerly Q-Industries) the digital marketing agency, announced that it has been awarded “Outstanding Achievement in Website Development” by the Interactive Media Awards™ for “Rack Room Shoes–Models Wanted 2009.” The retail website was honored specifically for excellence in Fashion/Style, recognizing that the project met and surpassed the basic standards of excellence that comprise the web’s most professional work.

“Over six years ago, Rack Room Shoes took the progressive approach of featuring its own customers as ‘models’ for its products, advertising and communications. The Models Wanted 2009 website showcased all of our current and past models in a highly creative and engaging way, generating significant consumer traffic and interest,” said Jan Mauldin, Marketing Director at Rack Room Shoes. “We were thrilled with the creative ideas, execution, and implementation by our team at agencyQ.”

The judging consisted of criteria including design, usability, innovation in technical features, standards compliance and content. In order to win this award level, the site had to meet strict guidelines in each area — an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each quarter.

Brad Heidemann, Executive Vice President of agencyQ, said, “It’s an honor to have our work recognized by the Interactive Media Awards. We feel strongly that our projects are world-class examples of how the Internet can be used to enhance a company’s brand and to inspire their audiences. Through close working relationships with our clients we’re thrilled to generate award-winning design.”

About agencyQ:
Founded in 1999 as Q-Industries, Q has grown from a small, technology-focused interactive shop into a full-service agency that excels in three core practice areas: Digital Marketing, Technology and Customer Engagement & Loyalty. Q’s account teams combine industry-leading subject matter expertise with a client-focused perspective – imagining, designing and delivering integrated solutions that attract, convert and retain customers. Headquartered in Washington, D.C. – with a new location in the Midwest – Q serves a global portfolio of commercial, government and association/nonprofit organizations. For more information, visit www.agencyq.com.

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Media Contact:
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DCPR
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Greg Nelson, Director - Customer Engagement

Does your company have a strategy to engage its clients and customers? As businesses face increasing competition and financial pressure, it is more critical than ever to understand how to turn customers into brand advocates.

Brands like Ritz-Carlton, American Express, Target and Apple have achieved iconic status by anticipating the changing needs of the marketplace. These household names go one step further by creating meaningful integrated marketing strategies that begin and end with customer relationships. People choose and remain loyal to these brands not only for the services they offer, but for the experiences they provide.

If your business is new to the concept of customer engagement, it isn’t too late to invest in an engagement blueprint. Recently, I had the opportunity to conduct an internal presentation on what it takes to create engaged customers. The presentation below summarizes my thoughts about customer engagement and offers insight into Q’s approach to helping our clients develop strategies that build meaningful long-term relationships with their customers.