Social Media Strategy Case Studies Unfold Live for Forzani Group and Reed's Natural Soda in Four-Part Webinar Series

LOS ANGELES, CA, Mar 24 (MARKET WIRE) --
Marketwire and Expansion Plus kicked off "Your Social Media Roadmap"
webinar series on March 19, 2009 with the first session of the series:
"Setting Your Baseline and Determining Goals." Guest expert John Blossom,
author of "Content Nation," joined Sally Falkow, the series host, to show
case-study participants Forzani Group Ltd., Canada's largest sporting
goods retailer, and Reed's, Inc., a US-based top-selling natural soda
manufacturer, how to benchmark and set goals for their organizations. As
the series progresses, the strategies of these two companies will unfold
for the entire audience, underscoring the step-by-step series that walks
attendees through every stage of social media marketing and strategic
development from goal-setting and researching, to choosing tactics and
measuring ROI. Each webinar features a different guest expert and
includes a companion whitepaper.

WEBINAR HIGHLIGHTS: Setting Your Baseline and Determining Goals

-- Social networking is not a fad and social media is not something that
affects only the PR and marketing departments; it impacts every aspect of
the organization. Because it is a business strategy -- not just a marketing
strategy -- it is essential that your organization's executives understand
what it is, what it does and why it's so important for the business to
embrace it.

-- With traditional media in decline, PR practitioners are suddenly
saying, "I need to be involved in social media and digital PR." If you've
relied on traditional means of spreading your message and building
relationships with influencers, and they go away, what do you do? You need
to change with the media landscape.

-- The process of setting up a social media strategy needs to be
well-thought out. No journey can be successful without knowing where you
are now, setting a goal to reach a destination and having a roadmap to get
there. Social media engagement is no different. Your first two steps are
setting specific, concrete and measurable goals and benchmarks. In order to
be able to measure the progress of your activities in social media, you
need to have a starting point.

-- Social media adoption by organizations is not just external facing
(company blogs, Facebook pages, etc.) but is internal as well. Forrester
Research estimates that "behind the firewall" social networks (internal
company networks or intranets) will be at least a $4.6B market in four
years, and a recent study by Awareness found that while 6% of organizations
already have deployed internal-facing communities, 33% say they plan to
deploy them.

-- Identifying goals in social media engagement can mean different things
to different companies -- increasing brand awareness, reputation
management, customer retention, increasing employee loyalty, lead
generation and many more. Reed's, Inc. has outward-facing goals such as
raising awareness of its Natural Soda within the mainstream market and
increasing positive online conversation, while Forzani Group wants to
improve its internal communication by building a community for its 11,000
employees spread across Canada.

QUOTES

Sally Falkow, Social Media Strategist and President,
Expansion Plus

-- "For 100 years, as marketers and PR people we have been looking at who
is our target audience, what do we want to say to them, where are they, and
we craft a message and we send it out -- this has all been on a one-way
push of messages and communication. The internet has completely changed
that [flow], so that people are talking to one another. The market has
become a conversation."

-- "Word of 'mouse' is growing. More than 25 million US adults regularly
share advice on products or services online. Instead of the message going
[only] from you to your audience, it's going from you to the audience, and
then to each other... to each other... to each other. The idea that you've
lost control of the message... I don't know that you ever had it. But you
can participate in these conversations. If you stand outside the
conversation, then you have no hope of having any influence over what's
being said. If you genuinely become part of that conversation, that's how
you can participate and engage."

-- "What do we want to do with a social media campaign? The whole idea is
that you can establish and sustain conversations online that are shaping
the perceptions about your products and services and everything that you do
within your company."

John Blossom, Author, Content Nation, and President, Shore
Communications Inc.

-- "It's a myth that social media is the Wild West and that it's not a
safe place to be. The truth of the matter is that most social media sites
and communities have a strong sense of community values that govern what
type of content gets published and what type of behavior is acceptable."

-- "Social media enables individuals to create content in contexts that
put them in direct contact with other people who value their insights --
and doing so gives them many options as to how to translate that value into
ways to survive and thrive. The influence that we have in social media is
personal; it's person-to-person in a highly scaleable fashion. It's like
having millions of copies of Tiger Woods around the world ready to endorse
your product or help people out with their expertise. Our ability to
influence other people -- to offer very personal solutions to their very
personal problems -- allows marketers to be able to understand people on a
one-to-one basis."

-- "People benefit who know how to have and listen to social media
conversations. It's not just marketers, but politicians, product support
departments at major corporations, etc. Remember though, that you need to
be ready to have these conversations where and when 'they' want to have
them."

KEY FACTS

"Your Social Media Roadmap" consists of four 90-minute webinars that build
upon each other to give attendees a complete, actionable social media
strategy. Each webinar includes a comprehensive whitepaper. Following the
series, a CD will be offered and made available to the public for sale.

Session 1: Setting Your Baseline and Determining Goals

-- Guest Expert: John Blossom, author
of "Content Nation"; president, Shore Communications
-- Thursday, March 19, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT
-- Attendees learn to:

-- Benchmark their company
-- Educate the C-suite
-- Gauge their social media ranking
-- Set realistic, measurable goals

Session 2: Researching and Planning

-- Guest Expert: Paul Gillin, social
media strategist; author of "The New Influencers"
-- Thursday, April 16, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT
-- Attendees learn to:

-- Identify important influencers, including evangelists and detractors

-- Pinpoint relevant communities
-- Know what people are saying, what they want to know and what
organizations should do
-- Create a strong online reputation

Session 3: Choosing Your Tactics

-- Guest Expert: Rebecca Lieb,
editor and consultant; vice president, eConsultancy
-- Thursday, May 21, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT
-- Attendees learn to:

-- Develop their content strategy
-- Take advantage of universal search
-- Choose the best tools for them: blogger relations, microblogging
(Twitter), podcasts, video, RSS feeds, social news sites and more

Session 4: Measuring ROI

-- Guest Expert: Katie Delahaye
Paine, publisher, The Measurement Standard; CEO, KDPaine & Partners

-- Thursday, June 25, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT
-- Attendees learn to:

-- Redefine the "R" in social media ROI
-- Measure the tone of blog posts, video views, search results and
comments
-- Analyze the impact of your efforts
-- Translate social media conversations to sales

REGISTRATION INFORMATION:

While social media webinars and seminars typically cost anywhere from $200
each to even thousands of dollars, during these tough economic times
Marketwire is subsidizing the cost of its webinar series, and is able to
offer the four intensive 90-minute sessions featuring five recognized
social media experts, four comprehensive whitepapers, live case studies
discussed and tracked throughout, and the downloadable archive of all at
$425 USD (single sessions available for $125 USD each). Special non-profit
discounts are available.

To learn more and to register: www.marketwire.com/SMStrategy

RESOURCES

-- Participate in Sally Falkow's Proactive blog
-- Participate in John Blossom's Content Nation blog
-- Join Marketwire's Social Media Corner on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
-- Access Marketwire's PR
2.0 resource center
-- Take a "test drive"
of a social media press release
-- Download Marketwire's whitepaper: Top 10
Strategies for Boosting ROI Despite Shrinking Budgets and Dwindling
Resources

About Marketwire

The only fully integrated North America-based global newswire, Marketwire,
Inc. is a full-service partner to IR, PR and MarCom professionals seeking
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workflow solutions, and more -- that help communication professionals
maximize their effectiveness while ensuring accuracy and best practices.
Having merged companies (Market Wire and CCNMatthews) in April 2006, and
enjoying a combined history of 25 years of service, Marketwire is now
majority-owned by OMERS Capital Partners, the private equity arm of one of
Canada's largest pension funds.

Marketwire distributes the majority of press releases issued by publicly
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For additional information:
Dagmar King
Marketwire
(310) 765-3255
dking@marketwire.com

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