Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/54443
ed book page, there is a list of options for visitors to choose from. After Our Work, there is Clickfeed, which feeds the Click blog into Facebook. The next one down is NewsFeed, using a technol- ogy called Postano, which aggregates all of the studio's social media feeds, such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, into a com- mon site that is updated every 15 minutes. Click pays a monthly fee for this service, which Corbett calls "an interesting way of having a dashboard of all your social media." A few lines after NewsFeed is Twitter, and thanks to the work of their development team they feed that into their Facebook page. As of press time, they have over 2,300 followers. "It's a bit of a showcase for clients in that area," reports Corbett. "It's good for us to be able to demonstrate that we can create these APIs." Click has different policies for each of their social media efforts. "For example, a blog can be a thought piece that is different from news, where you will find interesting tidbits and interviews with staff. It's really under the category of 'thought leadership,' so we try to drive thinking into the blog side. On the Twitter side, we'll run stories, but Twitter works better if you send out interesting tweets rather than, 'Here is our latest project.'" Click has many individual Twitter feeds. "I have one and several people here have one, and we have a person who aggregates any interesting individual feeds and retweets them into Click 3X, so we are sending out seven or eight tweets a day on various things. These are about the industry, not tooting our own horn." Corbett considers Facebook the Click community page, where you can find "embarrassing party pictures and birthday celebra- THE NOW CORPORATION Owen Plotkin, president of NYC-based The Now Corporation, has long been a believer in the power of the Internet, going back to 1994 when he was taking multimedia courses at NYU. "I started making Websites before anyone in our business had them," he reports. The Now Corporation (www.thenowcorporation.com), which opened its doors in 2002 as an editorial boutique focusing on television spots, has steadily seen an increase in Web content work. As that trend evolved, so did their business. "The technology has changed so much, it seems like now you can do almost any- thing at one workstation," says Plotkin. "So now we are not just an editorial boutique, we are a post production boutique." Plotkin, a YouTube partner and Facebook developer, sees social sites as a sales tool for those who are selling a product, but for his business it's more about branding and networking. "It also makes all of us better collaborators. It allows us to experiment with ways to reach people. All of these social networks have tools to show you how your content is being accepted. People come to us to make viral videos (and other content for the Web), it's good to know what works and what doesn't. A lot of our content has millions of views because of the little tricks we have learned over the years." But the biggest trick? Good content, he says. "The rest will come easily." In addition to YouTube and Facebook, Now embraces Google Plus, Twitter and Tumblr. Each one of these platforms holds a dif- ferent purpose for the studio. When Plotkin joined Facebook in '06, he signed up as a devel- oper. This got him (and anyone who is interested) access to their tools, which allow you to build either simple or complicated apps for your page. "It's pretty easy if you know a little about program- ming. I am not a programmer, but I've been writing HTML since '95. I've been a quick study, but you could really pimp your Facebook page pretty easily." Plotkin believes that Facebook is king right now, but he loves Tumblr for reaching young people. "You don't hear people talking about it in the broader media Now Corporation's Owen Plotkin does more than just surf the net, he is a Facebook developer and YouTube partner. tions" along with stories of notable new work. "This is not about thought leader- ship, it's more about Click as a community; it allows people to feel like they are part of it." Something you might see more of from Click in 2012 are live Webcasts. They did two live streaming sessions last year, and this content now lives on the studio's social media outposts. What will the new year bring? "We are going to take a more serious look at Tumblr, which is becoming one of the most visited sites out there," says Corbett. "We are already on Google Plus, but we don't see a lot going on over there right now. One of the tricks with social media is you have to keep looking at what the next platform is." So time will tell. much; it's basically a blogging platform, but it seems to have a cap- tive audience of tweens and teens. It has a cool interface that's really fast and nice built-in tools." Some content Now shares on Tumblr gets hooked into the stu- dio's Twitter feed, so cross posting these things is important to them. "I do curate differently for Tumblr than I do for Twitter and Facebook," he says."They all have slightly different purposes and audiences. Some stuff is posted everywhere and other things are more specific." He says many agencies have Tumblrs, as well as design companies. "They have to be in that space, and every space possible." Plotkin loves Twitter, and follows many in advertising and design. "There are a lot of great creative directors and directors on Twitter. Instead of having to follow their blogs, like a couple of years ago, I am on their feed and read the link to their latest post- ing. It's also a cool way to let creative people in entertainment stumble across things and find out what people are doing. I tend to post granular, techy, snarky comments; other times it's news www.postmagazine.com Post • February 2012 21