We have been brainstorming and updating the products and services -- as well as the descriptions -- offered by Gerris and we thought we would share a working version of some of the social media and social network development and managament services.  Please let us know what you think.

Online Business Intelligence

Tracking and monitoring the online reputation of your brand, company, product, and services on your behalf, as a way of keeping track of conversation real-time.  Unless reporting is explicitly agreed to, this “open source intelligence” will be monitored for content, friendliness, and threat. Any and all threats are triaged and reported to the appropriate client point of contact.

Online Media and Social Media Metrics

Gerris maintains a suite of tools, algorithms, and strategies that allow us to provide you and your client with bona fide measurements, including reach, tone, and sentiment.  This suite of tools allow us to create illustrative proof, over time, of the efficacy of the campaign from the launch and over time.

Campaign Metrics and ROI Reporting

Intelligence plus metric plus time equals reports. Client and campaign reporting is something that needs to be defined and agreed to in advance of the campaign because reports are not built into the campaign but are a la carte and you get to define the specificity and granularity of the reporting.  Generally, reports are done bi-weekly or monthly, usually interspersed with weekly updates and “as needed” alerts.

Twitter Community-Building Services

Twitter is not a broadcast medium, it is a community-prospecting platform.  In order for the entire community to take shape and take bloom, one needs to not simply register an account, one needs to design, populate, and then prospect followers before there can be any real growth.  This community-building leverages both our collected contacts and current community relationships as well as several tools that we use to help promote and grow online reputation and growth of your Twitter online reputation.  In other words, like everything online, if you build it they won’t come.  Building it is a start, if course, but unless you’re Oprah or Ashton Kutcher, there is a lot of work and a lot of building, promotion, and prospecting required, and that is what Gerris LLC can do for you.

Twitter Posts and Posting Services

Twitter has become an essential part of online branding. Companies, celebrities, brands, and even fictional entities have been leveraging the ease-of-use and the simplicity of Twitter to both communication with current and potential customers as well as being able to engage and respond to user question, user requests, and user responses.  However, it isn’t as simple as posting status updates to Twitter regularly.  In our process, we work with the client to come up with 25-100 pre-approved “tweets” that the client can approve, veto, or edit.  Over time, Gerris is able to message on behalf of you, the client, with messages that are consistent with client vision. After that, the messages are delivered to the Twitter stream with an approved frequency, from once-per-day to a couple posts to multiple-posts-per-day, with the frequency according to the scope of the contract.  During this process, it is also important — essential — to trust the Twitter team to be able to triage all replies and direct messages on behalf of the client — or, there needs to be a rapid process to triage replies and direct messages through the client.  As the campaign moves forward, the evolution of the campaign can change to offer more and more independence to the Twitterer.

Twitter Retweets and Retweeting Services

The secret sauce of Twitter is retweeting (retweet (RT)): a) to copy a tweet and then send it again on Twitter. b) passing along of messages in Twitter) Retweeting is the epitome of what makes Twitter such a powerful tool.

Retweeting allows Twitterers to repeat content from one Twitter stream they’re following onto all of their own followers.  Writing compelling tweets is what organically can result in retweets down the Twitter stream; however, it is also important to use Retweets as a form of reciprocal currency. Retweeting someone else’s tweet can engender attention or connection and build social equity within the “Twitterverse.”

In addition to intentionally retweeting on a client’s behalf, one of the benefits of running your Twitter campaign through Gerris LLC is that you are able to instantaneously have all of your client tweets retweeted through not only our staff’s Twitter accounts but through all the status-update social network sites our staff is a member of.

This allows our clients to automatically enter the conversation well in advance of their earned reputation online.

Twitter Message Modeling and Copywriting Services

In our process, we work with the client to come up with 25-100 pre-approved “tweets” that the client can approve, veto, or edit.  Over time, Gerris is able to message on behalf of you, the client, with messages that are consistent with client vision. After that, the messages are delivered to the Twitter stream with an approved-to frequency, from once-per-day to a couple posts to multiple-posts-per-day, with the frequency according to the scope of the contract.

Active and Reactive Tweeting, Real-Time Twitter Customer Serives Services

Twitter is more than messaging and updating the Twitter status, Twitter offers the opportunity to use the real-time web to discover conversation around your products, services, and brands and either collect the intelligence for reporting or action or to engage the conversation, be it through use of @replies, Direct Messages (DMs), Retweets, or even the addition of hash tags.  The Twittersphere is considered real-time so it is essential to keep up-to-the second with a constant flow of twitter mentions.  The best thing about Twitter is that one may also easily engage real people who are mentioning your brand or the brand of your competitor.  You can also mention these people, retweet them, or help them with any sort of problem they may well be having with you, your produces, your services, or your general customer support.

YouTube development

While it is simple to join YouTube, there are quite a few important steps one must take before launching. First of all, there is a lot of customization that one can do to make sure a client’s YouTube channel blends well with the client brand identity, mirroring the parent brand.  In addition, structuring the channel, making sure the channel name is appropriate, and also make sure that if there needs to be content that plays for more than the standard 5-minute limit the ways to extend that (even to hours) are implemented. There are ways to make revenue as well, through Google AdSense.

Since Gerris staff has been using YouTube since it was launched in 2005, we understand it well – most of all that, unlike television channels, YouTube is not simply a broadcast medium but rather primarily a community platform.  Like Twitter and other online communities like MySpace and Facebook, YouTube allows, and is most powerful with, a very deep level of participation.  Many companies, looking for the next viral hit or just a YouTube land-grab tend to forget this.

It is important to not simply create the YouTube channel and make it pretty, it is important to also upload all of the videos required as well, knowing what the most appropriate file type, file size, and file quality it appropriate for each particular application or requirement.  It is also important to customize the set-up based on how the client wants to share the content and with whom.

Online Video Distribution Services

Sometimes the community maintenance required for YouTube channel creation is too much for a particular client requirement or campaign and what is needed, instead, is a complete and comprehensive video upload to all of the current video sharing sites.

This video distribution service offers a quick and comprehensive upload to over 30 video upload and social network sites, including the usual suspects but also including many other less-popular and less well-known social networks; however, in order to best cover all possible opportunities for brand video sharing, it is always a good idea to make sure the client brand experience and client video assets always exist exactly where and when people are looking for them.

In addition, one of the largest ways people choose their video content in today’s market is through word-of-mouth and sharing, which we can help you ignite; however, a more predictable and common way of discovering content online – and the only way of discovering the content if the word of mouth does not include sharing links – is search. Doing a comprehensive video upload and distribution is a way of stacking the deck towards the discovery of the content organically by flooding the search engine indices with client content — which can result in the ownership of the content.  Video distribution is an important strategy towards controlling and promoting brand perception online – the secret sauce of the social web.

Facebook Page Creation

In the past, there were many methods for promoting on Facebook; however, Facebook is clamping down on Terms of Service (TOS) violations.  As a result of – and in response to – people creating profiles that do not reflect authentic people but brands, products, services, or fictional entities, Facebook has replaced business profiles and business groups with Facebook Pages.  Pages are entities not unlike profiles, and are becoming more and more like profiles. Like profiles, Pages have walls, updates, videos, events, and all the rest. Additionally, they interact with peoples’ statuses in much the same way that Facebook Profiles do.

When creating a Facebook Page or Group or Cause, it is important to remember that these Facebook Apps are community-oriented and need to be fed and watered.  The tools support community, conversation, and collaboration and many people develop these Facebook Pages as if they were a published brochure instead of a dynamic, developing, conversational community.  These communities are needy, more like a blog or like Twitter than anything like a page. A MySpace profile can be developed more like a proper web page, but Pages offer the opportunity to share Events, Conversation, Links, Discussion, Photos, Videos, etc. While they don’t have to be completely open and interactive, they do need to be responsive and there needs to be a certain level of maintenance and content creation committed to the Facebook Page.

There is a lot to know about the Pages, however, and there are many 3rd party tools and services that can be used to expand brand, including doing Facebook Ads and the like, to help promote the brand.

In order to best promote “fan” membership of a Facebook Page, one needs to be creative as to the reason why being a fan is worthwhile.  Some easy “gifts” can include exclusive content, Facebook-only offers, “live” interviews, access to celebrities or notables, etc.  When an online brand reputation

One of the things that makes Facebook Pages better than either Facebook Profiles or Facebook Groups is that the content is not hidden behind the Facebook Authentication Membership Wall.  More like MySpace profiles and groups, which are completely visible and partially accessible when not yet a registered member of the site, Facebook Pages are one of the few “rooms” in the mostly “gated community” of Facebook proper.  Facebook Pages can be indexed by search engines like a normal web page and found using simple keywords through Google, Live.com, Ask.com, and Yahoo!

One of the beautiful things about Facebook Pages is that Google loves Facebook more than just about any other web site (Google loves Twitter more) so brands that have a Facebook Page are often surprised by how quickly the Page turns up on the first page of search.

There are other ways of promoting brand on Facebook, which can include cross promotions with other Social Networks (have all of the networks aimed at the Page), organic SEO strategies, Facebook Ads, as well as incorporating a strong blogger outreach campaign aimed at brand promotion.

However, that said, it is hard to start a Facebook Page and we generally recommend starting with a Facebook Group.  It is much easier to prospect new memberships, invite new members, and get everything started from zero, so we often start with a Group, build that up to over 1,000 members, and then have the Group converted into becoming a Facebook Page, which is what we have the connections to do.  We call it the one-two sling-shot punch!

The advantage of a Facebook Page is that you can use it as a proxy web page for marketing and a proxy online community in support of your brand instead of developing or hosting your own; however, aside from being a “fan” of your company, brand, product, or service, there is little incentive, or “gift,” associated with ever returning to your Facebook Page unless you spend some time and resources developing unique content for the Page — Facebook Pages support photos, events, videos, message boards, a wall, etc –  as well as for responding to questions, queries, comments, and the like.

One of the strong advantages of smartly-but-aggressively developing messages, updates, photos, videos, and exclusive content is that the New Facebook Pages have evolved into me a lot more like the Original Facebook Profile, which includes status updates that scroll down each fan’s status update stream in exactly the same way their friends and family’s statuses update.

This is a very powerful method for brand messaging and distribution.  One of the past lacks of Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages is that it was too easy to join and forget, becoming a Group member or a Page fan and then never seeing hide nor hair of it until there was an explicit admin message to all members — a member update.

Even so, with Facebook Groups in the past, one was penalized by success because when a Facebook Group grow above 1,000-1,200 members, the ability to send a message to all members was revoked.

With the new Facebook Pages, it is easy to keep “fans” engaged and updates, through the regular status update stream that all users; unfortunately, as I mentioned above in the section about Facebook Groups, it is easier to prospect and collect new members on a Facebook Group and a Facebook Cause because it is very possible to easily invite personal Facebook “friends” to Groups and Causes.  When creating a brand profile on Facebook, it behooves one to develop all three: Facebook Page, Facebook Group, and Facebook Cause.