PHOENIX, Arizona, May 3, 2010— Cultural Sponge Helps Phoenix Pride celebrate it’s 30th Anniversary by donating over $10,000 in Services. Thousands of people attended Phoenix Pride weekend on April 17 & 18. Phoenix Pride celebrates and promotes the history, courage, diversity and future prosperity of the metropolitan Phoenix LGBT community. Every year, Phoenix Pride holds its annual Pride Parade and Festival to commemorate the birth of the gay and lesbian rights movement, but this year was special, it was Phoenix Pride’s 30th anniversary. Cultural Sponge donated services in 2009 and continued to prove their commitment to the LGBT community by donating services to Phoenix Pride 2010.

Heather Brown is the owner of Cultural Sponge, a marketing, graphic design and social media company. After a successful 2009 campaign, Phoenix Pride chose Cultural Sponge again as their 2010 official graphic design company. This year Heather developed the 30th anniversary theme: 3 Decades, 1 Community, 4 Pride! Along with developing Phoenix Pride’s 2010 theme, all other art direction and art work was developed by Heather and her company.

Heather Brown quotes, “It has been a pleasure and honor to work with Phoenix Pride during their 30th year anniversary. I would like to personally thank Phoenix Pride for once again choosing Cultural Sponge as the official graphic design company for 2010. It has continued to be a wonderful experience working with such a positive team. Also, it has been an honor to work on a project that means so much to the community.”

Phoenix Pride relies on many volunteers for a successful festival. Brandi Sokolosky is the Executive Director for Phoenix Pride and quotes, “Heather Brown and Cultural Sponge has been an absolute pleasure to work with. Its wonderful to have formed such a strong relationship with Heather and Cultural Sponge, they really understand who we are as an organization and what Phoenix Pride’s message is to the public. Heather spends a great deal of time sitting in brainstorming meetings with the Pride team, she really listens to the customer and gives you exactly what you are looking for. Throw Heather a concept and she can run with it, she has a great imagination. I look forward to working with Cultural Sponge on future projects.”

About Cultural Sponge
Cultural Sponge is an established marketing & graphic design company based in Peoria, Arizona. Cultural Sponge specializes in corporate identity brand building, graphic design, website design, social media, lead development and much more!

About the owner: Heather Brown attended Arcadia University and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts concentrating in Graphic Design. She worked as a National Marketing Director for a well known company before opening her own business.

• Follow other people. Yes, the best way to get followers is to follow other people (unless you’re a celebrity.) On average, out of 10 people you follow, 3-5 will follow you back.
• Use the search box. See that search box on the right? You can type in any keyword or phrase and a list of tweets will come up. Think of what your target audience might be tweeting about. Type in those keywords. Interact and follow those people.
• Look at your competitors profile. See who’s following your competitors and follow them.
• Promote your Twitter page everywhere. Place a widget on your website. Place a post on your facebook page. On all print put: “Follow Us on Twitter!” and your twitter url. Place a a signature line on your emails.
• Tweet multiple times a day with quality content. Tweet often to get attention and tweet about things that your target audience will want to hear.

These are the top 5 ways I have found to get Twitter followers by just using Twitter. Of course there are several online applications and programs out there that may help you as well. If you need help getting targeted followers on Twitter, we are the experts! Contact Cultural Sponge for a consultation.

• USING ALL CAPS – When email first became mainstream, it was well known that using all caps meant screaming. More and more people are jumping on the social media wagon that never knew the ground rules. Take note- ALL CAPS MEANS SCREAMING (did you hear me?)

• Repeating the same posts over and over and over and over and over again – In print and TV, repetition does equal results, but not if the commercial plays over and over again with no break. If you keep posting the same thing, you will surely annoy your audience and be dubbed as spam! Be creative, try saying your message different ways or tying it into a campaign. Here are some great twitter campaign ideas.

• Over saturation – Yes, you can over saturate twitter and facebook. When I look at my home stream on twitter and facebook, I expect to see messages from a plethora of people and businesses. I get very annoyed when all I see is posts from the same business. Try to time out your posts. A good way to time out posts is by using an automated system. Hootsuite is a great tool to help you automate and track tweets.

• Profile page – There are many mistakes when it comes to your profile page. Placing your logo as your profile picture is a no-no. It’s simple, people relate to other people. Post either your picture or a picture of your team. Place your logo as a background image.  Also, another big mistake is leaving your profile page incomplete. Make sure to fill out as much as you can, especially your website address.

• Stale automated messages – Automated messages are great, but keep them fresh and up to date.

• Posting personal information – Keep your personal and business accounts separate. Your clients don’t want to hear what you had for dinner or your weekend plans.

• Too many followers in a short amount of time – Yes, people notice when you have thousands of followers over night. An account that builds thousands of followers in a short amount of time can be conceived as not genuine and spam. Focus on getting followers within your target market. Remember it’s the quality, not the quantity of followers!

These annoying tactics could get your followers and friends to unfollow or remove themselves as your fan. Worse, some just hide your profile posts or ignore you every time you post. Cultural Sponge offers strategic twitter campaigns, social media classed and consulting for businesses. Contact us and get your business heading in the right direction when it comes to social media!