A little over a month ago I wrote an article (here) explaining the almost-unlimited positive possibilities that could derive from Facebook allowing companies/businesses to use the new ‘Timeline’ format for their public pages. Ad Age recently released a report stating that the Timeline profile will be made available to companies’ pages starting as soon as the end of February. This is huge for what businesses are going to be able to do (fully broken-down in my original article, linked above).

I think this could ultimately do away with the ‘tabs’ that most pages have. The strategy will ultimately lie in how quick you can sell yourself/gauge interest with your cover photo and recent uploads. It’s going to be a wild ride, and I’m very, very pumped for it. Once we have our clients up and running, I’ll be sure to link you all back to them.

As a young 24 year old gentlemen growing up in the new age of social media, I’ve come to find that social media engulfs a large majority of my free time/life. Whether it be through Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, etc., I always seem to find myself immersed in one of these platforms. I’ve never gone as far as staying home on a weekend night, ignoring actual human engagement with my friends, to instead browse social media sites – but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t at times preferred communicating with someone through social media rather than over the phone or face-to-face. In fact I can recall a time where I’ve been annoyed that someone was ‘actually’ calling me, rather than continuing the current conversation we were having through Facebook chat (I think this largely has to do with the fact that, just like texting, you can focus on multiple tasks – as opposed to talking over the phone, where the main source of your focus is towards the call/caller itself… maybe that’s just me though).

Either way you slice it, this is undoubtedly an issue, and I’ve decided I’m going to do something about it.

I feel that this social media dependence, or ‘social crutch’ as the Therapists and Doctors are calling it (I just made social crutch up) is something that’s becoming more and more common for people my age. I think that people’s social skills/activity are being handicapped by their constant reliance on social media sites as forms of communication. In fact one of my friends just told me they were taking a break from Facebook because, “I spend way too much time on it, I feel like friends neglect to communicate with me because of it…like they always know what I’m doing - I want to weed out some people and see who can actually try other means to communicate with me”

I thought that quote was fascinating. Fascinating not just because I couldn’t believe such an intelectual quote could be based on Facebook, but fascinating because it was true. Are social media sites like Facebook robbing of us of human interaction? Slowly turning us into robots who can’t comunicate/interact without some sort of screen being involved? I know (through friend’s siblings) that kids in high school are going to parties in other towns based solely on conversations/invites they received from other kids on Facebook. They haven’t even met in person, much less spoken over the phone – they’ve chatted and seen pictures of each other, thus deeming that the other is worthy of a hangout. That’s crazy to me – I remember when it faux pas to even FRIEND REQUEST someone on Facebook if you had never spoken to them in ‘real life’, much less attempt to engage a hangout.

In an attempt to make some sense of it all, and to see if this growing reliance on social media is an actual reality – I’m going to conduct a study. I’m going to research my social interaction for the next 75 days and I’m going to keep a running log of my interactions with friends, both online and offline. The 75 day layout will look like this:

• First 25 days: No Facebook (Twitter allowed)
• Next 25 days: No Twitter (Facebook allowed)
• Last 25 days: No Twitter and no Facebook – I’ll be completely ‘dark’

I’m going to be keeping track of my interactions with people – here is the first version (I’m sure new means of interaction will appear, and be added to the list throughout my study) of my list of different interactions:

• Interactions engaged (any attempt to communicate with me)
• Plans Scheduled (any plans scheduled through communication – plans can be anything from scheduling a phone conversation to a physical hangout)
• Plans generated (this is essentially if plans are acted upon – this is important because I’m interested to see if online vs. offline plans have a higher/lower success rate)

Throughout this study, I’m going to be keep a live journal (on this site) to keep everyone in the loop on what’s happening. I’ll be making notes of things that I find interesting, tasks that are more/less difficult and just an overall log of what’s going on in my mind.  For those of you that are curious – No, I will not be informing people of the REASON behind my ‘fasts’ from these social media sites; I believe that it would alter my findings (alter my findings is arguably the most scientifically inclined thing I’ve ever said… right behind scientifically inclined! – I think this ‘fast’ may be already increasing my brain productivity/efficiency). If anyone were to ask the reason I’m off these sites, I’d just feed them some excuse to extinguish the conversation (if any of my friends come across this, PLEASE don’t try to sabotage my study! This will be really great/informative for all of us!). Also, I’m going to be keeping track of how I reach out/get in touch with people as well).

The study starts today, so keep an eye out here on Nealadv.com for my future updates. Look for new/different types of interactions to be added to my list, as I’m assuming new areas of study will unfold. When all is said and done, I’ll publish my findings and we’ll be able to see how impactful these social media sites are in my everyday communication with people.

If you’re still reading – Thank you, Tebow bless you, and lets see how this thing goes!

Have you ever wished you could have a personal business card that features your awesome Facebook profile on the front and a customized quote on the back? Your dream has come true! Courtesy of Moo.com, you can get your first 50 Facebook Timeline business cards for FREE (I just got mine, check them out below – I apologize ahead of time for the ‘trying to be cool’ profile photo). This is just another example of how social media is finding its way into our offline lives. Now people can literally carry around physical hand-held sized versions of their Facebook profiles. Of course with these, you can put your Twitter handle, blog web-address or any other social/digital media profile you may have.

I’m not sure how many of you (who like to be taken somewhat seriously) would actually feel comfortable handing these out to people, but as a novelty item – these come in at about an 8.7  out of 10. So hurry now before the first 200,000 people take advantage of the free ones. You can still purchase them for a reasonable price should your heart desire.

I believe this is just the first step of how our social profiles will begin to take on a physical form/life of their own outside of the world wide web. What do you think the next steps could be? Sound off in the comments with some ideas.

In late December, Facebook unveiled it’s newest and arguably best-feature-ever when it released Timeline to the masses – of course I’m sure some of you already had it for a couple months thanks to the ‘secret’ Facebook Developer trick. Timeline transforms your Facebook profile into a scrapbook of everything you’ve ever done on the site, highlighting what it perceives as important events throughout your life (you can also create and customize important events and feature them on your timeline – birth, graduations, marriages, new jobs, etc). This blog is going to shed a little light on what Timeline could mean for business’ pages… and if YOU don’t have Timeline set up for your Facebook profile yet, for the love of Tebow get on that.

There hasn’t been an official date released for when Timeline will become available for businesses, and there are even some rumors that it might not happen at all. I personally think it’d be foolish for Zuck (Mark Zuckerberg, keep up) to not allow Timeline for businesses, because only good can come from it. Imagine being exposed to a scrapbook of your favorite company’s history – who wouldn’t want to see that? The aspect I think would be the coolest is that you’re not just simply reading a history book on your favorite company, you’re going to have the ability to interact with it as well.

For example, say (this isn’t factually accurate, but for the sake of the point I’m going to make, just pretend it is) Nike’s first year as the official sponsor for the University of Oklahoma and Boise State’s football programs was the 2006/2007 season when the two teams eventually ended up meeting in that season’s Fiesta Bowl (one of the greatest football games of all time if you’re not familiar). Since this would have been a amazing moment in Nike’s history, they would have the ability to ‘feature’ it on their Timeline. Fans of Nike would have the ability to come upload (at Nike’s discretion, of course) their photos they personally took at the game, and it would all be added to the featured Timeline event of Nike’s historic night – the fan becomes part of Nike’s history.

Nike would also (back to being factually accurate here) feature the first time Michael Jordan wore Nike sneakers in a game on their Timeline and fans could comment on when they got their first pair of Air Jordan’s. Another great Timeline ‘feature’ they could have is when they take over next season as the NFL’s official sponsor.

Checking-in on Facebook would take on a whole new meaning with Timeline, as great photos, important events, or even celebrity check-ins could be featured on the Timeline (see the ‘I love my McDonald’s’ example below). Instead of scouring Wikipedia’s dully designed pages to learn the history of your favorite team/company/product/restaurant you’d be able to take a photo-filled tour of important dates and moments in their history.

All in all, I honestly can’t think of any reason why Zuckerberg wouldn’t allow companies the privilege of Timeline – only good can come of it for both the fans and the companies (and Facebook, duh!). It would also be a great addition for fan pages – you could see the history/important events that occured in the lives of our favorite athletes, politicans and entertainers. There’s no timetable on when Facebook might release Timeline for non-personal accounts, so here’s to hoping we see business/fan page Timelines soon! In the meantime, check out these artistic creations of what a couple of companies Timelines COULD look like (courtesy of Mashable).

Hello world! My name is Rob Werkowski and I’m the new Social Media Specialist here at Neal Advertising.

After years of training and believing in myself, Jesse Friedman (our Director of Web Development) drafted me first overall in the Young Digital Media Professionals draft this Winter.

This of course is untrue, as I acquired the job through a standard interview process where I got to meet Jesse and several members of the Neal team. At the end, it was clear that both Neal Advertising and myself were perfect fits for each other.  In this, my first blog post, I’d like to tell you a little about myself, things I like to do, and what I’ll be doing here.

I originate from the green-grassy, good old country town that is Tolland, Connecticut. Minutes away from the University of Connecticut, I grew up in UConn Huskies country (2011 National Champs baby!). My parents originated from Massachusetts, so I inherited the Boston sports-fan gene – with the former Hartford Whalers consuming my hockey interests. Nowadays, the Patriots take up the highest percentage of  my fan-hood thanks to football being my favorite sport since I started playing in middle school. I moved from CT after high school to Beverly, MA – where I attended Endicott College and majored in Communications.

I first fell in love with social media courtesy of gasp… MySpace in the mid-2000′s. I loved creating a profile, expressing my interests/ideas/photos and interacting with people digitally. I got into MySpace sometime during my senior year of high school and was off the site almost as soon as I had gotten on, thanks to the new college social network ‘Facebook’. (Yes – I said college. When I signed up you had to get invited by someone who was already on it, aaand you had to have an email address that ended in .edu).

From there things took off and I tested the social media waters with almost every site that came out. Nowadays, I’ve settled in with the big boys – Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp and a few other randoms from time-to-time that show potential (looking at you Google+).

This perfect storm of social media dropped my boat right on the sandy shores of Neal Advertising. Here, I’ll be monitoring the social media accounts for our clients while discovering and strategizing new ways for them to see success on the social media front. In this day and age, it’s imperative for companies to provide their fans/customers with a platform to interact with not only each other, but with the company itself.

I’m also going to be captaining the Neal Advertising blog (second boating reference, I know – I apologize) so you can expect to see a lot of exciting things in the future. We’re going to be exploring the world of digital media, giving you a view of what we’re working on as well as make ourselves a little more transparent – with some team bios and other fun things like that. I’m looking forward to getting things moving and I can’t wait to see what the path ahead has in store for me.

A quick personal snap shot of me: I love country music and a small-medium sized portion of rap. I love summer/fall cook-outs (and/or) tailgates and consider pretty much anything that Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly make as comedic gold. Tom Brady is the best quarterback that’s ever played, but I’d love to debate it with you because I’m a reasonable level-headed sports-fan and person. My favorite things to do are hanging out with my friends, playing football (both real and fantasy), participating in social media and lounging at beach bars/restaurants.

We just wanted to take this opportunity to wish our friends a Happy and Healthy Holiday Season. Oh look we made videos too…

Development Team Video

Office Dilemmas

Jingle Bell Rock

Working at Neal Advertising it’s not uncommon to hear great ideas for advertising campaigns on a regular basis. Coming up with great ideas isn’t the challenge, coming up with Amazing ideas (commonly referred to as “awesomesauce” in the office) can be, but the real challenge is getting everyone involved to buy into that idea.

We knew that getting Kevin Youkilis and Herb Chambers together to sing “Just a Friend” was a Great idea. Adding Biz Markie to the mix was what made it AWESOMESAUCE! However, a couple of months ago that’s all the campaign was, “an idea”.

“It was a fantastic team effort, everything seemed to come together perfectly. Working with Biz and Youk was a fantastic experience as well. Overall it was a lot of work but well worth it, as the campaign was hugely successful and extremely fun.” Neal Bocian President

Today we have a commercial which has had over 50,000 views on YouTube, mentions on Boston.com, Boston Herald, NECN, CBS Sports and many other places.

We’ve built a responsive website to allow for easy viewing on mobile devices and embedding on Facebook.

We’ve documented behind the scenes of the video production and working with Herb, Youk and Biz.

“You never know how a client is going to be feeling the day of a shoot let alone what to expect out of two celebrities and on this occasion, we hit the jackpot. We’ve done a number of spots with Herb in the past and I have never seen him as relaxed and charasmatic in front of the camera. It was like Herb and Youk were old friends and Biz just brought the whole thing up to a higher level. Eran, Leif, Craig and the entire team from Element were awesome and I couldn’t have asked for a better day.” – Chad Foster Creative Director

It was a true team effort getting this campaign live, not only within Neal Advertising but with Element Video Productions, Herb Chambers Companies, Biz Markie and Kevin Youkilis. It was one of those beautiful moments where everyone got excited for the idea and what came of it was a wonderfully harmonious and successful project that couldn’t have worked if it wasn’t for everyone’s efforts.