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Stop advertising in social media and start putting social media into advertising

CPMs in social media are low and advertisers are not getting quality results in their display ads on social networking sites. The reason for low CPM’s is that folks inside of social networks can be there to network, explore and share and the advertisements are intrusive and unintegrated. Common display ad units are primarily about entertainment, and there is a major disconnect in consumer engagement with those ad units. Why aren’t advertisers reversing the trend? They should be taking those same ad units, which they’re trying to force into social networking sites, and instead try putting the social networking inside of the ad. Advertisers should make it easy for a consumer to engage with an ad by letting them put the ad onto Facebook, add it to their calendar, share it with a friend, and so on. We all know the power of word of mouth and advertisers should be harnessing this in the rich media ads they are distributing across the web.

Thanks Ernest.

Congruent online marketing

Promoters, marketers and publishers share the same ambition, to reach more people than ever dreamt in their wildest dreams. Getting a consistent message out to a lot of people isn’t easy, especially in an online space where messages can easily mutate. Worst case scenario, your promoting process turns into a bad game of telephone, where the first and last person are hearing two completely different stories.

Fortunately, Spongecell’s publishing, messaging and reporting tools work congruently to deliver your message to hundreds, thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. Each component of the platform is like a brand-rep working to communicate your message, to all the right people. (*BRAND NEW solution)

1. Calendar widgets for Blogs/Websites: Create calendars for upcoming events and publish anywhere. Allows your audience to move the content from a temporary place online, to a permanent place in their life.

2. List Widgets for Blogs/Websites: Create a list of events and publish anywhere. Just like the calendar widget, your audience can choose from a variety of interactive options to move your content into their blackberry, Facebook/MySpace profile, calendar, email etc.

3. Web pages: Every event added to Spongecell receives it’s own live event page, with a wide variety of widgets that can be customized and embedded to build a rich media page.

4. Social Networks: Easily add events to social networks to spread word through the most universally trusted source, friends.

5. Eventful/Upcoming Publishing- Publish events on popular event search engines. Eventful and Upcoming are two of the most popular event aggregators. Anyone who searches will find your Spongecell event page.

6. Email-Spongecell provides 1,000 free emails to every new user, and contacts can easily opt in or out of a list, so your list is always growing.

7. *Rich Media Ads- The most recently introduced product is Spongecell’s Rich Media Ad, which is transforming the existing nature of online content. Simply put, applying interactive features to online ads creates more engaging ad content, and as a result more effective.

Spongecell on Read Write Web

Almost a year ago, Read Write Web included Spongecell in an article about intuitive calendar apps, which was one of our first available online tools. We’ve had so many additions to our platform since August, today RWW devoted a full length article to Spongecell’s now complete event marketing platform.

Spongecell may no longer be a must have office application — if you’re looking for a simple calendar, try Google — but it is now a very well made and versatile platform for running an online event calendar on any web site. Deciding not to compete with Google was probably a smart move for the company, which now has a much better chance of cornering their intended market.

We’re definitely excited here at Spongecell to be able to provide all of you with a complete set of publishing, messaging and reporting tools that make your events more engaging & successful. And the fact that we’re able to provide all of these tools for free, means there’s no reason not to sign up and make Spongecell your event marketing management platform.

Read the full article at Read Write Web!

Busy night in New York

There seems to be a ton happening in NYC tonight for the Web/Entrepreneurial community tonight. We’ll be attending and presenting at Web2NewYork, then there’s the NY Tech Meetup as well as a Startup Alpha event. Our NY office will be well represented at each of these events. It should be a fun and busy night and we’re looking forward to meeting a bunch of folks and of course talking about Spongecell.

Promote multiple events, with ease

Park Ave Cd’s of Orlando Florida has built a following of over three thousand fans on MySpace and even more on their store website, and it’s not difficult to see why. They have a packed schedule of performances, listening parties, midnight sales, meet-n-greets; the list goes on.

They stumbled onto our site a few months ago and began managing their busy schedule of events with a list widget. After they published the list on both their store website and MySpace page, they blogged about how our application has helped them get the word out, further and easier. All events are managed from the same account (big time saver when you have so many events), and are aggregated into one list so fans can easily navigate . Read below, or check it out on their blog!

Howdy, everyone! This blog is a special blog for us (read: me) here at PARK AVE CDs because we want to share with you a very special Website and Promotion Utility we think you’ll love! WE LOVE IT!

It’s called SPONGECELL and it’s awesome. We use it to post store events and other PACD happenings, too. Best part, aside from being super easy to use and very powerful… it’s FREE! You just have to check it out for yourself, honestly. People can add our events to Myspace, Facebook, iCal, and numerous other places. Another awesome feature is folks can set “reminders” about events, and receive them via email or TXT Message!

Hey, it’s free and, as far as i’m concerned, (yeah, i’m a little dorky with this kind of stuff) totally badass.

RemindBlast Launches – Remind your friends they stink!

RemindBlast launched yesterday. So far the response has been incredible, people are using it for everything from vehicle maintenance to birth control.

David Passiak of Spongecell comments, “There’s no catch – no opting into a list or any weird stuff like that. It’s just a simple site we put together to help get our brand out there. Check it out, and if you find it useful, use it.”

RemindBlast is also an open source project built on top of the Sponger API for Spongecell. Build your own Spongecell application!

User Spotlight: Hip Hop Association

Take a look at how awesome the Hip Hop Association’s homepage looks with a new event list widget. Every event added to Spongecell receives it’s own live web page, and they took their event page customization to the max:

• Designed a creative hip hop header image.
• Provide a link to buy tickets to the event.
• Uploaded the official flyer for each different event.
• A google map (so you don’t get lost)
• RSVP widget, to gauge the turnout.
• Post comments, so people can talk up the event (just like your Facebook wall)
• Actions widget for users to spread the event around the web to blogs, websites, social networks MySpace/Facebook, set reminders or add to calendar.

Great way to bring the hip hop community around the country, a little closer together. Check out the list widget for upcoming events, Erykah Badu and the Roots anyone?

Podcamp NYC: Interactive Marketing Realized Across Industries

Last Friday Spongecell attended Podcamp NYC 2.0, a first & rewarding experience all around. The day kicked off with two Spongecell lectures given by CEO Ben Kartzman, and by days end our three Spongecell representatives were making tons of new introductions and networking with a wide range of professionals, eager to learn about new media tools. The range of participants was most impressive including firemen from the NYFD, educators, media & music industry professionals, and CEO Ben Kartzman even got to deliver his first live podcast with podcaster Johnny Goldstein !

We’re very thankful to the organizers of Podcamp for allowing us to set up a table at the last minute, which allowed us to take advantage of meeting participants between sessions throughout the day. The day turned out to be as much about relationship building as skill building; and the wide turnout reaffirms the need for easy to use interactive tools, across industries. We look forward to attending future Podcamp’s, and working with Podcamp participants to simplify and streamline their online marketing, as the demand for interactive continues to grow universally.

If anyone from Podcamp NYC was unable to attend this week’s Webinar, you can register here for next Wednesday at 2 pm EST.

A Venture into the Future

Spongecell founder and CSO Marc Guldimann was featured in an interview this week on the Carnegie Mellon University website.

“Guldimann and his colleagues are the founders of Spongecell, a firm specializing in calendar technology established in 2005. Spongecell aims to be be the best way to communicate about events online. It offers attendees tools to easily move email and web-based event information to other media, like calendars and Facebook, increasing the probability they will attend.”

Read the full interview here!