For the second year in a row Armadillo Studios is proud to announce that we will be attending The “SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin Texas”:http://www.sxsw.com/interactive. In preparation for the big event we are also extremely proud to announce, through an international collaboration with “Nonimage”:http://www.nonimage.com/ and “Stalelife Inc.”:http://www.stalelife.com/ we have launched a definitive guide to absolutely everything related to the SXSW festival in Austin Texas.

You can find this definitive guide at “SXSWisEASY.com”:http://sxswiseasy.com.

Designed with simplicity in mind, *SXSWisEASY* provides straight up information for everything related to SXSW. It covers everything from “essential elements of Austin TX”:http://sxswiseasy.com/austin/dos-donts/ to the Best “Interactive Parties”:http://sxswiseasy.com/interactive/parties/ all they way to a list of the “Social Do’s and Don’t of the Film Festival”:http://sxswiseasy.com/film/essentials/.

Essentially, everything you could possible need to know to prepare you for SXSW in one easy to read spot.

As a group we have also provided a break down of the best parties and best interactive sessions at the festival. Including our own take on why it’ll be worth sitting in on the session. A guideline to help you make the most of your time down there.

So please spread the word of SXSWisEASY, send it to anyone you know heading to Austin. Even start following the “SXSWisEASY Twitter account”:http://twitter.com/SXSWisEASY for the latest updates and information.

*A big thank you goes to our friends Kurt, Joey, and Andy for getting this project rolling and letting us take part. Thanks again guys*

As a quick note to our customers.

After testing the latest WordPress for the past month, Armadillo Studios will be upgrading all of our CMS-based web sites to latest 2.7 release.

As the CMS of choice for all of our projects, the newest version of WordPress is a far more intuitive upgrade to it’s predecessor. (To be honest, we really “thought 2.5 and 2.6 were pretty dramatic improvement over the previous versions”:http://blog.armadillostudios.ca/article/wordpress-25 )

You can watch this video from WordPress.org for a little bit of a walk through for the changes or you can skip below and read some of our initial reasons that you’ll love the new system.

* *Stronger Security Features* – The New WordPress 2.7 fixes many of the security vulnerabilities found in WordPress 2.6 or 2.5. Which is essentially a roundabout way of noting that your site will be less susceptible to being spammed.
* *A More Intuitive Interface* – 2.7 has a far more intuitive design, which allows users to edit pages and create posts with less clicks.
* *QuickView Function* – This is a new addition to the WordPress Interface and essentially allows you to toggle comments, pings and other information straight from the list of posts/page. Again this is an element of a more intuitive Interface, but it is a quicker way to edit your posts.

If you have any questions regarding this upgrade, feel free to contact us at any time. We’ll be happy to answer questions you may have.

A couple of days ago, we notice an influx of visitors to our little corporate site and to our blog. Upon further investigation we discovered an interesting business card gallery called “Cardobserver.com”:http://cardobserver.com/.

And with a little scan of their beautifully designed site, we discover that our first run of “Armadillo Moo Cards”:http://cardobserver.com/gallery/armadillo-studios was the *featured business card for January 21st, 2009*.

It’s always neat to be recognized for our design work and we’re happy to see that our corporate branding has made a bit of an impact. We want to thank Cardobserver.com for the recognition and spreading the Armadillo brand.

If you are curious, Cardobserver.com is a recently launched web site and a fantastic gallery for those looking for corporate branding inspiration. Have a quick look and examine some of the unique ideas coming out of our industry.

That’s right, “Armadillo Studios is officially on Twitter!”:http://twitter.com/armadillostudio.

It’s not secret, that members of the Armadillo Team have been avid users of “Twitter”:http://www.twitter.com for the past year and a half. So today we finally decided to take the big plunge and create an official Armadillo Studios presence on Twitter.

We will be connecting with some of our other friends through out the industry (Great companies like Stalelife, NonImage, PrairieHippo, louderthan10, Veer, etc.,) and also using this account to spread some of the twitter love around. We also plan to promote our blog posts, our client releases and to also forward on some of our favorite bits of advice from the Twitter-sphere. Essentially spreading the news and also answering any of our clients questions.

So if you have an account, what are you waiting for “start following us!”:http://twitter.com/armadillostudio – @armadillostudio

But Wait! What is Twitter?

Whoops! I guess we got a head of ourselves a bit.

For those unfamiliar, Twitter is one the most popular emerging Social Networking sites on the Internet today. As described on their web site:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called “tweets” of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.

In essence, Twitter is a great watercolor of ideas. (Thank you Andy for the description) A great way to connect, build relationships and share information.

If you’re looking for the hot catch phrase for 2009, look no further than the term _Social Media Expert_ or _Social Media Marketing_.

The Internet and the Web Design Industry is a buzz with this new term. While a select few are championing themselves as leaders in the Social Media field, many predominate members of the Web Design Industry are shunning the two terms and working to create a compressive definition.

We’ve been following “Roger Kondrat’s twitter feed”:http://twitter.com/roger for the past little while as he explores the topic and has dug up some interesting links. These articles have got the proverbial hamster wheel spinning a bit for the Armadillo Team and we would like to point out two extremely important ideas (or warnings) about Social Media from articles that Roger has posted.

So have a quick look over these two tidbits of cautionary advice and insight before looking at Social Media Marketing for your business.

What _Truly_ Defines someone as a Social Media Expert?

Enrique Guiterrez’s article on “Social Media Marketing don’ts and do’s”:http://enrique-gutierrez.com/2008/11/social-media-marketing-donts-and-dos/ has a series of important points to consider when approached by a Social Media Marketer, but the most important seems to be that a _true Social Media Marketer is not just an avid user of Social Media, but someone that will be able to explain how they will utilize Social Media to get your customers engaged_.

Many so-called Social Media Experts seem to be championing their followers, links or the size of their own audience as proof of their Social Media expertise. But this is alone odes not qualify some one as a true _Social Media Expert_. Instead these so-called experts should be detailing and justifying the various campaigns they have launched, the successful reinterpretations of brands for social media they have created and the business effects on their client’s campaigns.

As Enrique puts it, an expert who champions their audience will do nothing more than create an _Echo Effect_ in regards to your product. What you need to find is someone who understands Social Media and can think out side of the box. This individual must be able to look at a product and find ways to manipulate the most popular Social Media applications or sites to increase a products brand.

They should be able to explain your audience and then dissect what sort of applications or sites that audience utilizes that you could benefit from by having a presence.

Can Your Company Take advantage of Social Media?

Our answer is a resounding *Yes!*.

We here at Armadillo Studios believe there is great potential in Social Media Marketing; especially in the undeserved Southern Albertan market.

But as pointed out on Traacker’s list of “10 simple rules to tell who you are talking to”:http://traackr.com/blog/?p=36, it takes some understanding and patience to get true value out of Social Media Marketing.

As the article mentions, Social Media Marketing should be _a relatively inexpensive_ venue for promoting your business’ services. You do not need a large budget to get involved in Social Media Marketing; instead you need time, commitment and the persistence to let it grow. Many _So-called_ Social Media Markters are championing large advertising budgets and fast ROI on their campaigns.

In reality, these campaigns are relatively inexpensive and require a little bit of time to foster to fruition.

For example a Niche Bakery could set-up a _free_ “Twitter account”:http://twitter.com/about to update clients on the specials for that week. Or create a _free_ fan page on Facebook to notify their subscribers of specials, products or even some home made recipes. The only investment the bakery truly needs to create a community is a *small amount of dedicated time to constantly update* their Twitter/Facebook accounts, *some energy* to reach out to potential clients and *a web site as a focal point* for the community. As you can see this sort of campaign is relatively inexpensive (As signing up for most Social Media Networks requires zero investment costs), but it does require time and patience to foster a loyal community.

While it seems relatively easy for a Bakery to take advantage of Social Media, what about a legal firm? Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are all great communities, but none of them necessarily fit the professional image of a Legal Firm. But a true successful Social Media Marketer will still be able to leverage other tools such as a Published Professional Article feed, LinkedIn Company page or other legal related communities to help showcase the Legal Firms Expertise.

While both examples are on different ends of the business spectrum; both campaigns require minimum monetary investment and time.

Are Social Media Campaigns Worth it?

We here at the old Armadillo Studios believe and champion Social Media and the tangible benefits that it can potentially bring to our clients. We have been working to launch integrated campaigns, but are not ready to call our selves fully-fledged Social Media Experts. We put together this little article to caution others before they get caught up in the excitement of social media and provide some information for potential clients.

If this topic interests you, please read “Aaron Roe Fulkerson”:http://www.oblogn.com/2009/02/01/social-media-expert/ list of Quantitative metrics for determining a Social Media expert or Mark Havenner’s article on “Measuring ROI of Social Media – Another Perspective”:http://seowizardry.ca/The_Wizards_Blog/measuring-roi-of-social-media-another-perspective/