Everywhere Agency is a social media, content and influencer marketing firm. This is their client stories blog post archive.

National Dog Day Autotrader Event

Brands’ Best Friend: Pet Influencers Welcome

Everywhere Agency knows that one of the quickest ways to likeable social content is to “Put on a dog on it!” We are canine enthusiasts, bringing our fur buddies to work regularly, ugly crying over dog rescue videos, and supporting pet adoption. Being both social media experts and animal lovers we’ve been following the trend of pet influencers for quite some time, and even way back in 2014, The Telegraph reported that 1 in 4 cats and dogs had their very own social media accounts. As of last week, we took our puppy love and social savvy to the next level. We have officially welcomed our first four-legged member to Everywhere Society, our in-house influencer network. Meet Indy the Goldendoodle.

pet influencer indy the goldendoodleOur dive into dog talent was inspired by our client, Autotrader. Everywhere was engaged to help produce #ParkandBark, an event celebrating National Dog Day. Autotrader used the event to educate dog owners about the best pet-friendly cars and accessories. Hundreds of dog guests enjoyed free treats, received swag prizes, and played in the costume photo booth. Pet experts schooled the crowd in dog CPR, the art of doggy massage (Shi-A-Tzu… Get it?), and puppies in need were available for adoption.

Everywhere also took this opportunity to reach out to a few A-list Instagram influencers, including Indy the Goldendoodle and Sparkles the Diva.

So why are brands so eager to add some canine appeal? It could have something to do with the fact that this year pet owners are projected to spend $62 billion dollars on their furry friends, according to the American Pet Products Association. Not to mention the added bonus that brand reputations are rarely ruined by the actions of a Yorkshire Terrier. Dogs breed happiness, with pups like ChloeKardoggian slinging products for Clorox and Boo the Pomeranian working as a liaison for Virgin Airlines, it’s hard to think of a brand that wouldn’t benefit from pup-endorsement.

If you know a great pet influencer looking for amazing brands, be sure to tell them to apply to Everywhere Society. Also, we will be attending BarkWorld, the premiere pet blogging conference, this October. If you’ll be there too, give us a woof because when it comes to pets and brands - we think this is just the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

ME Day is March 16th

The second annual ME Day, a day to celebrate our uniqueness and pamper, nourish and develop our personal passions and skills, is on March 16th.

Our client Domain.ME is here to inspire you to take this day and indulge in some “me time”. Why? This infographic explains why taking a ME Day is critical for your health and personal relationships! On top of that, it tells what you can do with your day off.

 

Did this infographic help encourage you to take some time off for yourself? Tell us about it in the comments!

A Personal Website = Professional Success

Our client, domain .ME (they’re the folks who sell the unique URL ending dot.ME aka about.me or rooms.me), just came out with a survey drawing the correlation between professional success and having a strong brand presence online. This rang true for me because my own digital presence has helped me find multiple jobs, make a name for myself, and organize my online footprint into one convenient location.

Some highlights from domain .ME’s study:

  • 50% of respondents use their site to grow their careers,
  • 72% use their site as a hobby,
  • and 70% believe that employers are reviewing their online brand before they are interviewed.

While I’d like to think it was my previous job experience, my schooling (go Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets!) or my inimitable charm that got me my position at Everywhere, Danica admitted that she stalked me on my site before extending the offer. Much like the respondents in the survey, I use my site (www.lina-skandalakis.com, as show above) both for my career growth AND as a place to talk about my hobbies - it’s a hub for all things ME! What I’ve heard from Danica and others is that my site gives a fuller picture of who I am both as a professional person and a personality. I put a lot of effort into building my site because I believe it’s vital to control your personal brand.

Another interesting statistic from the study:

  • 73% of respondents think having a “personalized” domain name is important for one’s online brand.

I agree wholeheartedly, and this is coming from someone with a very unique name. Trust me, there aren’t ANY OTHER Lina Skandalakises out there (believe me, I’ve looked). While I have a .com, I bought it before I knew that .ME was an option. Friends who are thinking of starting a personal brand site often ask me for advice and I strongly recommend they consider a domain .ME URL. Why? It’s unique, eye catching and ME focused (perfect for a hobbies and career hub!). It’s even better if you can cleverly incorporate your brand into it (much like the folks at Despicable.Me did).

I got a job in part because I had a uniquely branded site. People I meet often check out my site, which shows so much more about me than my paper resume or even my LinkedIn profile. Having a personal site is attractive; in fact, the study shows that:

  • 70% believe that having a website is important to attracting new opportunities.
  • And even though they’re not necessarily using their site for their careers right now, 85% admitted that in the next 5 years a website will become more important to career success.

That is so true – we live in a Google-able world, and Google, along with your unique URL, can and should be the new word-of-mouth. So whether you’re hoping to attract new opportunities, land the next great job, or control your digital presence, the proof is there. Having a site is directly related to your professional success.

 

Disclaimer: Domain .ME is a client of the Everwhere Agency, but this blog posts reflects my own thoughts and opinions.

 

100 Good Deeds Bracelet #DeedADay

#DeedADay and the Democratization of Ideas

In 1992, Mary Fisher stood up at the Republican National Convention looking very much like the daughter of a prominent Republican family (which she was), and announced on national TV that she had AIDS. It was a hugely shocking moment for the crowd and for most of America. In 1992, the very word AIDS was shared in hushed tones and considered a scourge of just gay men and Haitians. At that time I worked in television production in NYC. I alternated between my job working at Saturday Night Live and freelancing at this hot production company, Peter Wallach Enterprises. My boss at the time there had AIDS, something he never overtly confessed to me, even though we were as close as school chums and all the symptoms indicated that he had the disease. My editor at the post-production house, where we cut the short films I produced for SNL, was grey, rail thin and hacked through our late night editing sessions. He said things like, “My immune system is shot,” yet he never publicly admitted he had AIDS. In 1992, I remember watching blonde, blue-eyed Mary on TV, standing there in her prim white dress and realizing that things were going to change for the better. Mary gave a voice to the voiceless.

Ron Edmonds/Associated Press

Flash forward in my career 20-odd years later and I find myself working in an industry, social media, which does just the same. I launched a career in this field over six years ago because I was excited by the power of this new medium to bring about change. What I saw very clearly was that social media was the ultimate democratization of ideas. Anyone could speak – we all had a megaphone in our blogs, our tweets, our Facebook status updates. If an idea was good enough, strong enough, it could be seen, absorbed and passed on to others. For a person like me who had devoted a quarter of a century to working with big media, big PR and big advertising, I was infatuated with the concept that good ideas could be distributed outside of an advertising campaign and without regard to any editors fickle preferences.

Last night I witnessed that democratization of ideas with the woman who stood on a stage and inspired us so long ago. We joined forces with Mary Fisher and her team to launch the #DeedADay movement. The movement is inspired by a bracelet Mary designed called the 100 Good Deeds bracelet. It’s made by vulnerable women in Haiti, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, India, and Bali. The bracelet is strung with 100 beads and wraps around your wrist. There is a small rubber ring among the 100 beads and the idea is you wear the bracelet both as an ethical fashion statement and as a reminder to do good deeds. Every time you do a good deed — going out of your way to do something kind for others — you move the ring over until you get to 100 beads.

I met Mary last year in Haiti and talked to her (a little too enthusiastically) about the power of social media to change the world. I guess she remembered our conversation because she asked me to do something connected to the theme of New Year’s resolutions. Sharing the message of doing good deeds felt bigger than me and my firm alone, so I called a few of my friends who run major blogging social media networks. I reached out to Stacey Ferguson of Blogalicious and the b-Link Marketing Network, Ana Flores of Latina Bloggers Connect, Jyl Johnson Pattee of MomItForward, Barbara Jones of the One2One Network, Cat Lincoln of Clever Girls Collective, Nadia Jones of the Niche Parent Network, and Kelby Carr of the Type A Parent network. They all agreed to join forces with me and ask their collective networks to share the #DeedADay movement on their blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Twitter channels. I hate to use the word viral, but there’s no other way to describe what happened. #DeedADay is everywhere on social media. With over 40 blog posts to date (what will ultimately be 80+ posts total), 6500 social posts and 1100+ individuals who’ve participated, we’re at 50+ million impressions.

Last night we teamed up with Jyl who runs the popular Twitter chat #GNO. We began talking to women across the country about how they think about good deeds. We hit a nerve and the Twitter stream lit up. In one short hour, we generated 25 million impressions. Women talked about ethical fashion, the importance of teaching their children to do good deeds and setting good deed resolutions in 2015. At one point, even Rosie O’Donnell, who’s known as simply @Rosie on Twitter joined the conversation.

A screenshot from the #GNO #DeedADay Twitter chat - Rosie shows off her 100 Good Deeds Bracelet.

As we head in to 2015, I’m heartened to know that initiatives like doing good deeds can build momentum in social media, the democratization is alive and strong, and the fact that one women’s voice can make a difference.

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Why We Heart Spelbots

 

Whether traveling across the globe, across town or teaching a robot to dance, the Spelman SpelBots have made the robotics industry both interesting and fun. The SpelBots are an all-female, African-American robotics team at historically black Spelman College, in Atlanta, GA.

The SpelBots made history in 2009 when they became the first African-American all-female robotics team to qualify and win the international robotics soccer competition, RoboCup in Japan. I consider myself fortunate to have the privilege to work closely with an organization like the SpelBots who not only have made history globally, but have also made an even bigger impact on their community.

SpelBots provide hands-on robotics education and research for women and students in computer science. This is particularly important as women and African-Americans are a minority in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) industries. These phenomenal women compete locally, nationally and internationally at robotics competitions while educating and helping to introduce grade-school students about the importance of math, science and engineering.

SpelBots celebrate Black History Month on Facebook

Andrew B. Williams, Ph.D, is the founder and coach of the SpelBots as well as the Director of the Humanoid Engineering and Robot Systems (HERS) Lab at Spelman College. During the past two months, Everywhere worked with the SpelBots and Dr. Williams to increase their social and digital presence on local and national levels.

Celebrating SpelBots Black History Month Socially

In celebration of Black History Month, Everywhere collaborated with SpelBots to create a social campaign featuring a different African-American woman in computing and technology each day of February on their Twitter and Facebook pages.

Honoring SpelBots on a Local Level

Helping to promote SpelBots Black History Month on a local level, our team worked with Atlanta City Council representative Keisha Lance-Bottoms to honor the SpelBots with a proclamation from the City of Atlanta deeming February 6 as “Young Black Women In Computing and STEM Day”.

SpelBots proclamation from the City of Atlanta deeming February 6 as “Young Black Women In Computing and STEM Day”

Up next for the Spelbots

The SpelBots reflect the great strides that African-Americans and women take in computing and technology. While they travel the world, they never forget their community and the importance of serving as positive, passionate and intelligent role models introducing science and technology to the next generation.

The SpelBots will hopefully make history again as they travel to Mexico City in June to compete against 27 teams in RoboCup.

 

To follow the SpelBots’ trail of success follow them on Twitter, like them on Facebook and visit their website.