Raleigh Web Design, Web Development, Internet Marketing, E-Commerce, Social Media Marketing, SEO, Development and Content Management

Some recent changes have had a big impact on our company. For starters, our business compadre of the past three years, Jeremy Smith, has left the company to pursue new career endeavors, and we all wish him the best of luck in his new ventures.

However, there is still work to do and the company will live on with a refocus on our service offerings to concentrate on what we do best. Twine Interactive will be rebranded as a new entity called FRAGMENT. Our name change is also a result of our efforts to avoid conflict with the Website Twine.com. By proceeding with rebranding process, we believe that we will avoid future confusion as our company continues to grow and to expand. 

Since 2006 I have been working closely with my business partner Jeremy Smith to build a company based on our visions.   Over the past few years we have faced many different challenges and have grown personally and professionally.  As with all things, visions change over time to include new technologies, trends, ambitions and goals.

With so many businesses beginning to embrace social media, it's no surprise that holiday-based social media contests are popping up all over the place.  We've been tweeting and blogging like crazy about the Social Media Week and Valentine's Day Giveaway we recently launched for Shuckers Grill. In the few days since we began, Shuckers has gained more than 200 Facebook fans and over 100 followers on Twitter.

Twine Interactive is an internet marketing agency specializing in social media and web design. Located in downtown Raleigh on Fayetteville Street, we pride ourselves on the creative atmosphere fostered by the team at Twine. While our work is fast paced, we live by the motto "work hard, play hard."

We're in search of a web development intern to help us on a variety of projects. We are looking for someone passionate about web applications and excited to add value to our company and expand their skills as a web developer.

Valentine's day is a mere 5 days away (thank goodness for express shipping) and if you're a procrastinator like most of us, you may not have picked up that perfect gift for the someone special in your life. If your main squeeze loves social media as much as we do at Twine Interactive, this list of web 2.0 themed gifts might be just what you need to keep you out of the dog house. Click on the photo to be taken to the product link.

1. "Tweet Me" Conversation Heart Ring

Today kicks off the Social Media Week & Valentine's Day Giveaway for our client, Shuckers Oyster Bar & Grill. They'll be hosting several Twitter contests, location based specials and giving away coupons via Facebook. When we started working with Shuckers they had two Facebook fanpages which were not custom branded. For the launch of their social media campaign, we decided to remove one fanpage, create a custom Facebook landing page and a coupon page to address their goals. The main goal for their Facebook presence was to increase brand awareness leading to sales, increase email subscriptions and track customer coupons. To address their goals, Twine Interactive created a custom Facebook landing page with an email newsletter subscription form, a custom designed coupon for fans to enter their name and and note tab outlining Shuckers Social Media Week & Valentine's Day Giveaway.

When you think of Valentine's Day, words like love, relationships, candy and flowers come to mind, right? But with social media being a hot topic for companies looking to leverage the power of the social web in 2010, words like Twitter, hashtags, check-ins and Facebook could be one couple's ticket to a free Valentine's Day dinner. Starting Monday February 8th, our client Shuckers Oyster Bar & Grill, will encourage their customers and the Triangle community to participate in the Shuckers Social Media Week and Valentine's Day Giveaway.  During this week, Shuckers will have a series of Twitter hashtag contest, Facebook coupons for fans and exploring what some are calling the next big thing, customer specials using location based applications. 

A good agency runs like a well-oiled machine.  It understands what needs to happen with a client's project from start to finish and from sales to post production, every step is cared for and monitored carefully.  Each project is made up of a million intricacies; all of which work together to produce one spectacularly polished product once complete.  So why can't an agency run without tried and true processes?  Simply put, the projects would be complete chaos and the agency would not survive. 

Photo Courtesy of Jevons Chang http://www.flickr.com/photos/jevonschang/

This week in unraveling the web is a new series where we highlight some of the week’s most popular articles in design, social media, tools, development, search and marketing. This is the fifth post of our new weekly series here on http://www.twineinteractive.com/blog. We hope you find the post useful and please feel free to comment, sharing any post that you may have read this week which was inspiring or sparked a conversation.

Last week I had to opportunity to speak at the North Carolina Economic Developers Association (NCEDA) Seminar on what's next in Social Media. For the talk I created the presentation above that focuses on not just social media but hardware and other other technology trends that I think all business should prepare for. A few are real-time social search, interactive online video, location based apps and social CRM.