ESPN is keeping its competition on their toes through its embrace of digital media.  Some of ESPN’s digital efforts include a new radio app for the iPhone and iPad by the name of ESPNFC, the network has also added a YouTube channel (Grantland’s), and created a partnership with Twitter which will start with the NBS Finals.  ESPN has created a platform specifically geared toward female viewers by the name of espnW and added a global soccer destination.

Is it possible that this may be inspiring competition to become more technologically savvy?  Competition is taking steps forward in the digital age as well.  Fox is in talks of a national cable sports network and Comcast is already developing an NBC Sports Network.

This is not only beneficial to sports fans but to advertisers as well.  It’s a great opportunity to distinguish different demographic groups!  To read this article click here.

Hello everyone! My name is Lauren Miller and I am the new summer intern at Bensur. I am very excited about this opportunity and am already implementing my education with this internship. I can tell that I am going to learn a lot and enjoy this experience. Just a little about myself, I was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania. I went to high school at Mercyhurst Preparatory school and then decided to attend the University of Dayton. I am going to be a senior in college this upcoming year and I am majoring in marketing-sales emphasis with a minor in management. I love where I go to college and have 4 roommates who are all my best friends. My roommates and I are very weird to say the least, in a good way and there is never a dull moment.  It has been a great experience so far and I am not looking forward to it coming to a close in a year. Aside from that, this is my second day at Bensur and I am very excited to spend the next 3 months working here, learning as much as I can!

It has been a week today since I started my internship here at Bensur Creative Marketing.  This is my third internship and I have an additional half a year of work experience in the marketing field.  I am a Penn State Behrend alumni, having graduated May 2011.

Outside of work I’m an anime nerd, a musical enthusiast, I love singing along to almost every Disney song, I listen to techno when I clean, I LOVE to write, and tae kwon do is one of my many passions (It’s actually where I met my fiancé).   I know the combination of the many things that I enjoy may seem strange but I think of it more as just being uniquely me.

My first impression of Bensur = Amazing!  The people here are so extremely personable.  Even the big boss man takes the time to talk with me and make me feel like part of the team.  Even more exciting is that I’m already getting actual marketing tasks and not just the typical first week or so full load of intern duties.

I think that it’s obvious that I’m hoping the additional experience that I gain at Bensur will help me to acquire a marketing job in the Erie area by the time the end of the summer is here, so wish me luck and keep your fingers crossed for me!

-Roseanna Smith (aka Intern2, aka Cool Ranch)

Everyone knew this day would come, but who knew it would come so quickly. It is true what they say, “time flies when you’re having fun.”
It seems like just yesterday I wrote my first blog to introduce myself as the “other newbie.”
But now, today is my last day interning here at Bensur Creative Marketing, and time truly has flown by.
My experience here has been great. I have learned so much from everyone, and I am extremely grateful to have had this opportunity.
So, thank you to everyone who allowed me to work with them these past few months, you will be missed!

Mufasa (my office nickname)

Check out this week’s newsletter!
This weeks topics cover how social media is bringing awareness to the dangers of driving in high heels, UFC on Twitter, Dunkin’ Donuts, and a Twitter versus Google discussion.

It’s everything you don’t want to miss!

Click here to read it!

Dr. Dre’s 1992 debut album, The Chronic, is #137 on Rolling Stones top 500 albums ever. But until now, I always thought that the album was about drugs. How very wrong I was…

After a meeting the other day with a client, our office was introduced to a new, edgy product that you don’t want to drink before a drug test. It’s called Chronic Ice: Premium Hemp Iced Tea.

Much like Dre’s album, the iced tea also received favorable reviews–at least from the office anyway. Just take a look at this actual exchange between Kevin and I…

BENSUR offices – 2:34 EST – March 25, 2012
Kevin sips Chronic Ice Premium Hemp Iced Tea while thumbing through the latest issue of Modern Metals Magazine.
William, returning from doing something heroic, enters the scene.

Kevin: “This tastes like Lipton.”
William: “Do you like Lipton?”
Kevin: “Yes.”

Score!

The hemp gives Chronic Ice an earthy flavor and also adds some major health benefits. Among these, hemp is said to be awesome for brain health and anti-aging. It says so right on the Chronic Ice label!

So to recap, it tastes like Lipton and it’ll make your face less wrinkly. What more do you need–especially if you’re really thirsty and have a super wrinkly face.

If you’re interested in trying Chronic Ice out for yourself or just have a serious case of the face wrinkles, you can check out their website here.

Do you have a Twitter account? Do you log into the site multiple times a day? Do you “tweet” a lot? Have you ever tried to avoid Twitter for a period of time and failed, or felt miserable without it? If so, you may have a Twitter addiction.

Some might say that it is not possible to have an addiction to a social media network, but a study done in 2010 proves it is. A group of college students were asked to go 24 hours without logging into Twitter or posting any tweets. Some of the words they used to describe the experience were, “failure”, “confusion”, and “isolation”. Other research shows it may be more difficult for people to give up Twitter than some of the more common addictions like alcohol or cigarettes.

If you are finding yourself to be a potential Twitter addict, you should find comfort in the fact that you are not alone. Some celebrities made an effort to give up their Twitter accounts and failed. Alec Baldwin claimed he was done with the social network, but that only lasted for a day before he was back to it, posting tweets.

Of course, there are worse addictions than Twitter. So, if you are addicted, don’t lose sleep over it. Maybe just try and tweet in moderation.

To read the full article click here.

“The Walking Dead” is a show about a zombie apocalypse that has engaged their viewers way beyond the average television show. “The Walking Dead” has over seven million facebook likes and close to 300,000 followers on twitter.  After the show plays on AMC, they have an after show called “The Talking Dead” where they discuss “The Walking Dead” by allowing viewers to ask questions online, which are then discussed on the show.

By using social media and apps for the AMC show, they have engaged the audience and made it more than just a show that people watch.

In this article, they talk about whether the success that show “The Walking Dead” could be duplicated with another show or topic and also give some good advice to entrepreneurs.

Apple is now worth 500 billion dollars which is higher than the GDP in Poland, Belgium, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, or Taiwan. There is a list of things that Apple is worth more than that is very entertaining. Even though Apple is a large company, it is continuously growing, last year the sales grew 73%!

Click here to read more

Google will be selling glasses soon. However, these glasses aren’t the average reading glasses. While wearing them you will enter a virtual world. They will portray advertisements, information, and entertainment. They will also have a GPS and a video camera in them. If you see someone walking down the side of the road wearing these glasses and doing weird things it may be because they are playing a video game on their glasses or saw a virtual advertisement. From reading the article, it seems like they could change the world in a positive way but also could be dangerous!

There are a lot of interesting features the glasses will have. For example, meeting someone for the first time, the glasses can identify them and tell you how many facebook friends you have in common! Also it could tell you their name, if you have met them before and cannot remember it. If you want to read more about these glasses click here.

If you do not own a smart phone or have no alternative communication to texting, there is no immediate need to fear just yet. Texting is likely not going anywhere fast, despite the billions of dollars phone companies missed out on last year.

It has been reported that phone companies missed out on a tremendous amount in text message revenues adding up to $13.9 billion just last year. Tech-savvy consumers are now using alternative, free communication options such as Blackberry Messenger and Facebook Mobile Messenger applications. Some are predicting a huge loss unless phone companies take action and create something before they lose out all together.

Of course, nothing drastic is going to happen overnight. About 75% of all the cell phone users in the world still use good, old-fashioned text messaging. And before you start to worry that your phone provider is going to go out of business because of the money loss, take into consideration all the money brought in because of the fees customers pay due to going over their plan limits. These fees more than make up for the revenue loss.

Do you think you will ever cancel your text message plan? Are you already following the trend of using alternatives to text messaging?

To read the full article on Mashable click here.

Jeremy Lin is giving himself a name. His numbers on the court are impressive but his numbers off the court are even more impressive. Google searches for “Jeremy Lin” are up over 1,800% percent, the average attendance for the last three Knicks road games are up 17%, and t-shirts and jerseys with his name on them are selling like crazy. On Sina, which is the Chinese version of our twitter, Lin has now over a million followers.

Why is he such a big deal? Standing at 6’3” and weighing 200 pounds, he is averaging 14.6 points a game for the Knicks with 5.7 assists per game. Some stars love talking about themself but when Lin is asked about himself, he humbly redirects the topic to his teammates.

Click here to read more

The majority of internet users today are linked to some sort of social media website. For most, it’s Facebook, others Twitter, and for some both. A year ago if you were to ask people if they had a MySpace account, the answer most likely would have been “no”, or, “I used to, but got rid of it.”
Well, it seems to be that things are now beginning to change.
MySpace has been reported to possibly be making a comeback. The social network saw a major decrease in subscribers with the growth of Facebook. In fact, it has been reported that in just one month 10 million people stopped using their network.
As of now, things are changing. MySpace, currently with a new team of owners (including Justin Timberlake), has changed their image and what they are all about. The new primary focus of the site is music.
They are said to have the world’s largest library of free music with over 42 million songs. Since the major changes, there has been an average of 40,000 new users per day and at least 1 million new users in the past month.
Will MySpace continue to grow? Will people latch on to the idea of a music-centered networking site? It seems that only time will tell.

To read the full article click here.

Social media is something most people talk about and use everyday. Some businesses are beginning to embrace it, while others are fighting this rising technology. However, with the potential to spread a negative customer experience rapidly all over the internet, businesses would be wise to monitor what people are saying.

More and more, customers are using Twitter as an outlet to express their opinions of certain companies. The trend seems to especially be growing around the issue of customer complaints. Before Twitter and the Internet, consumers didn’t have a way to voice how they felt when they were disappointed with a product or service, unless they were one of the lucky chosen few who actually got their story printed in the paper. This meant that things didn’t spread too far beyond the customer’s group of friends. Now, things have changed. With the rise in social media, things have the potential to spread rapidly to hundreds, thousands, even millions of consumers.

All it takes is one person who had a bad customer experience to let the world know on Twitter what happened to them and potentially influence the opinions of many others.

For businesses this can be detrimental. For customers it can be the best thing that ever happened. If businesses ignore the fact that people now have a way to talk that can reach the entire world, their brand name might be acquiring damage without them even being aware. For customers, social media can be a positive thing because it creates a new way to solve a problem. Companies who monitor what is being said about them online don’t want any negative word getting out, so when a customer does post about a bad comment, the company can step in and fix the problem by doing whatever necessary to keep the customer ultimately satisfied.

Moral of the story, businesses need to jump on the Twitter bandwagon and pay attention to their customers.

To read the original article and check out the Infograph on Soshable click here.

When running a business of any size, it is always a good idea to know what the customer thinks about your product. But from the inside looking out, how do you find out what people really think?

A great way to get a genuine understanding of how a customer perceives your company is to reverse your point of view and look from the outside in by becoming a customer.

1. Research SEO (Search Engine Optimizer). If you type your product name or key words your company would like to be associated with into a Google search and find that you are not on the first page, then you need to invest time into SEO. If you do the right things, you can improve the visibility of your webpage in search engines and become the number one search result. Think about it as a customer, how often do you type something into Google and then scroll down and click on the next page of the search results?

2. Check forums and read reviews about your products. Opinions are forming about your product and people are not afraid to share them. Check out what people are saying and see what they are saying that is positive and what is negative.

3. If you have the opportunity to buy your product, do it. If you are selling products online go through the process and see what people are experiencing when they purchase your product.

The influential marketing blog talks more about this topic and suggests how to put yourself into the customers shoes without using focus groups. Here is the link to the article in the Influential Marketing Blog.

Everyone has heard of, and most likely used Google to search something on the internet at some point or another, some use the search engine on a daily basis. In June of 2011, Google decided to enter into the world of social media by launching a new site they called “Google+”, which they hoped would become the next popular social networking site.

At first it seemed that Facebook might have met its match when Google+ became the fastest growing social networking site for the first 16 days it launched, even faster than Facebook and Twitter. However, the buzz was short lived. For some people (even those who are tech-savvy) Google+ was difficult to navigate through and most didn’t see the purpose in signing up for another social networking site.

In order to avoid a total flop, Google+ launched a new feature yesterday, January 10, 2012, to make surfing the web for their members more personalized. They achieved this by merging the traditional Google search engine with Google+ to create what is now called, “Search plus Your World.”

Only Google+ members will be able to take advantage of this new and exciting feature. How it works is, the user enters key terms in the search bar and a list of results is produced that are links taken from the web as well as from past posts from “your world.” The results that appear from “your world” are marked with a specific logo so it is clear which results are from the web and which are from your Google+ account. The goal of this new idea is to predict what the user is searching so they can better navigate the web.

Of course, there may be times when the user might want to exclude all results from “your world” and use Google search in the traditional way viewing things strictly from the web. To exit out of “Search plus Your World” it is as easy as clicking a button that allows the user to search Google the old-fashioned way without any posts from “your world” interfering with the listed search results.

Will this new feature help boost Google+ popularity? Will it be enough to compete with the top social networking sites? As with anything, it seems that only time will tell exactly how much Google+ will succeed in the competitive world of online social networking.

Information and Statistics from Jeff Bullas’ blog and Mashable Social Media
Click here to read full article from Mashable

Hello all! My name is Alyssa Hanisek and I am the other new intern here at Bensur. I am a senior at Behrend hoping to graduate in May with a degree in Marketing! I was born and raised in the Erie area, but left for 2 years after I graduated high school to try out life in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After spending two winters there I decided (contrary to what most people might say) Erie’s winters were not that bad, at least compared to Minneapolis. I chose to move back to Erie to escape the -40 degree winds of the Twin Cities. And so far, I have no regrets. Despite being from this area I am a San Diego Chargers fan, not a Steelers or Browns fan. There is no main reason why I chose the Chargers except that I simply love San Diego! I also love to travel, so Southern California is one place I try to visit as often as possible. This picture was taken while visiting some of my family in California a few years ago. Today was my first day at the office, but so far it has been great! I am super excited to learn from everyone here and very grateful for the opportunity to gain this marketing experience.

Hey,

My name is Shane Quigley and today is my first day as an intern. I am very excited and know that I am going to learn a lot, also I get my own cubicle! I am somewhere between 6’3″ and 6’5″ (Every time someone tries to measure how tall I am, they end with a different result). I love all sports but my favorite is basketball. I played college basketball for 2 years and it was a lot of fun and a great experience. I do not watch much television but when I do, I watch either King of Queens or the NFL. I am a big Green Bay Packers fan and usually have to show the picture below to prove that I have always been and didn’t just jump on the band wagon after last years super bowl. Going to Lambeau for a game is on my to-do list but I have not had the opportunity yet. I went to Seneca High School which is out in Wattsburg. The part of Wattsburg I live in is about fifteen minutes away from Erie. I currently go to Behrend as a marketing major. My mother is an accountant, my father is the director of operations at a homeless shelter, my brother works at General Electric, my sister is a pastor, and my girlfriend is about to graduate from University Park and already has a job at General Electric as an industrial engineer that starts this summer.

The BizLink Group Web Site – Another Successful Connection

When The BizLink Group was hungry for a web site to help launch their new business, they came to the right place. Bensur designed a delicious new site that showcases the unique services offered by BizLink… Global networking connections for two distinct sides of the Food and Beverage industry. BizLink makes connections between national brands who are looking for new ingredients and services, and companies supplying unique ingredients and processes who want to develop new sales channels.

BizLink is founded by Dono­van Wong, a pro­fes­sional in the indus­try with 20 years of experience and a track record of prof­itable sales suc­cess. Wong cre­ated BizLink based on net­work­ing resource capa­bil­i­ties, sales and tech­ni­cal expe­ri­ence, and knowl­edge of spe­cific sec­tors of the Food and Bev­er­age industry.

Check out the new BizLink site here.

Social networking is a common practice amongst people of all ages today. Facebook has been the most recognized site with the largest number of members for quite some time. This past summer, Google+ entered the picture and made it their mission to create the largest social networking site around. Google, being the most popular search engine site, was said to blow its competitor Facebook right out of the water. It seems like now though Facebook is not only staying afloat, but Google+ is the website that is sinking.

The layout of Google+ is nearly identical to that of Facebook, which makes some wonder what it even has to offer that Facebook doesn’t. Google+ makes you separate your friends into circles, making it easier to hide things from co-workers and parents if desired. The Facebook grouping option is more of a way to communicate with certain groups of people, instead of keeping them in the dark.

Facebook is a place for people of all ages. By making Google+ exclusively invite only and ages 18 and up, this discouraged a lot of people from trying to join. Also, since there are so many people on Facebook now, they feel like they don’t need another social media website to be a member of. Adults who have been able to track down classmates from high school and college aren’t likely to just walk away from that, especially because it is probable that those people aren’t all going to have Google+ invites.

Facebook also has business pages, which allow members to connect with various companies, bands and celebrities. While this annoys some members, it is something that Google+ is lacking. Although you might not want to see advertisements on the side of your page all the time, occasionally you will see something that you are interested in. This is not an option through Google+.

Google offers a variety of games, but doesn’t quite have the selection that Facebook currently does. They introduced Angry Birds, Sudoku, Bejeweled, and Zynga Poker. By releasing Zynga Poker, that meant that Facebook wasn’t the only social network with Zynga games on their site. Cityville and Farmville are two Zynga games that are exclusive to Facebook, which are incredibly popular. After Facebook heard that more games were going to come out on Google+, they tweaked their gaming platform and decided to provide a separate stream that allows the people who play games to see their high scores and the games that their friends are playing.

Google+ also strictly enforces their rule of no pseudonyms. Some people want to use pseudonyms to protect their identity on the internet. Other people feel as though their name is too long, and some have nicknames that they would prefer to be recognized as. If people want to be called by a certain name, they feel as though they have that right. And if it’s a problem, they are likely to go elsewhere where it isn’t an issue.

A major downfall of Google+ is the lack of users. Sure, they had 25 million within the first month of starting. And sure, that’s a big number. But when you look at Facebook’s 750 million users, it doesn’t even compare. Google+ decided that they were going to have a “field trial period” in which one could only become a member if invited. A lot of people, even if they were invited and do have an account with Google+, don’t use it. They say it’s because no one would really see what they have to say and because they like the diversity and variety of people found on Facebook. Many people are still continuing to use their Facebook accounts even when they are also a member of Google+.

People feel comfortable with Facebook. It is not something they are willing to walk away from completely. More often than not, there are pictures that don’t belong to a member but in which they are tagged in. If they want this picture and the rest of their pictures, they have to take the time and energy to transfer them to Google+ or their computer so that they are not lost forever. This alone helps people to stick around, just because the idea of starting everything all over again just to network socially is overwhelming.

When Google+ came on the scene a few months ago, they planned on becoming more popular than Facebook. But all this competition and added stress has just made Facebook excel. They are improving and adding things to their site, and staying on top of their game. Facebook does not seem willing to go down without a fight, and with their loyal customer base, it would take something drastic and completely different for Google+ to create in order to overpower them.

Jessica Gallman
Bensur Creative Marketing Intern