The nature of communications is evolving. More and more people are getting their information online rather than from print. Social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, and blogs have generated unprecedented interest. People are already talking about your brand. Now is the time to join the conversation. We develop strategies and incorporate digital marketing tools into the communications mix to further enhance your brand’s influence and reach.

BALZAC’s digital marketing services include:

• Social media marketing strategy: Many clients come to us with the desire to get involved in social media, but they don’t know where to start. We can assess your needs, outline opportunities and prescribe specific actions for long-term social media success.
• Implementation guidelines: A few clients come to us already involved in social media to a certain extent, but they need help navigating a complex online landscape riddled with potential landmines. We work with these clients to ensure that they are portraying a consistent brand image and message, that they use the different mediums most effectively in communicating their story, and help develop best practices for future development and communication.
• Online presence assessment: We offer clients an in-depth analysis of their brand’s presence across the various social networks, blogs, and microblogs, and a strategy for ways to improve it. We tailor our suggestions to realistic options including niche opportunities and relevant mainstream tactics.
• Competitive analysis: People are talking about the competition as well. Are they doing well or poorly with their online activities? We identify their tactics and offer advice on how to counter strengths and take advantage of weaknesses.
• Community building: We outline which communities are worth participating in, what the competition is doing and how clients can naturally enter these communities and form relationships. Once engaged, we monitor these communities, track brands or keywords across those, and proactively respond to both positive and negative mentions.
• Social network profiles: We identify the social networks where clients should be participating and where people are talking about them. We help create and manage their social media profiles to attract visitors and leverage the two-way conversation.
• Blog design, setup and/or optimization: A blog is a great tool for clients to communicate with customers and fans. But, too many clients begin blogs with the best of intentions, only to let them go dormant. In the end, it may be better to not do a blog if the resources aren’t in place to manage it. We help clients determine objectives, put action plans in place, and help generate content to make their blogs most effective.
• Video creation: Video sites such as YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo or Metacafe attract millions of visitors per month. We help create video content for a variety of purposes, from winemaker interviews and harvest report to online ads and winetasting. While we can’t promise a video will go viral, we make sure it’s distributed across the web on the websites that matter.
• Online broadcasting: From podcasts to webcasts, the Internet has changed how live events are broadcast. We help build a strategy for clients who wish to launch a broadcasting project. We help them get set up, and then make sure their content is distributed across the web to build an audience.
• Wiki presence: A “wiki” is a website or similar online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively. The most commonly recognized wiki is Wikipedia. We help clients establish a presence on relevant wikis, which yields greater credibility for a brand as well as helps elevate them in search engine results.
• Online surveys: Whether conducting an internal company survey, or surveying hundreds or thousands of your customers, it’s never been easier to do market research. We help create, distribute, and analyze online surveys ranging from a simple Q&A format to a custom application with more interactive features.
• Social Media Monitoring: With more than 600 dedicated wine bloggers, 19 million blog posts and comments, 2 million tweets a day, 50,000 registered site forum members, 100 million Friend Feed entries, and 100 wine social network sites, monitoring everything that is being said about a brand may seem impossible. We help clients set up monitoring tools to effectively by measure and interpret the online chatter.