Tag: Marketing

Holy shit!!! I just updated my iPhone to 3.1 a...
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While the Vikings were sticking it to the Packers on Monday Night Football, Verizon was sticking it to Apple and AT&T in the only way they really could; on the issue of reliability and connectivity…

Recently, I had the chance to use both my BlackBerry Curve and an iPhone 3Gs on a trip from Green Bay to Nebraska and back. My assessment? The iPhone excelled in every area except one: phone calls and connectivity leading me to ponder ‘what does it profit a man if he gains all the apps in the world but suffers the loss of his phone call’ [sorry, Lord!]. The BlackBerry on Sprint outperformed the iPhone on AT&T in phone calling, streaming inbound audio from Pandora, and uploading to the internet. Unfortunately, the quality of photos and videos on the Curve is less satisfactory than the iPhone making IT a less than useful tool for the social media applications I was using. So what’s the answer? There is no answer! The iPhone fails in the one thing a phone is supposed to do; make and hold calls and Verizon stuck it to them good in this new campaign…

Don’t get me wrong — the iPhone is truly amazing — but by partnering with AT&T Apple has left the door open for someone else to dominate in the smartphone space like maybe Google/Verizon. The moral of the story? Think before you buy an iPhone and ask the users where you live what their experience has been. The best advice is still to go with the best network in your area and then get the best phone they have. If you want that slick iPhone capability without the phone, get an iPod Touch — you’ll be happier!

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Desert

In December of last year, I embarked upon an experiment to see if I could leverage a website with a blog combined with social media tools to increase traffic to a site. In that month, my sandbox site had a grand total of 670 pageviews. In the month that ended yesterday, I had a total of 15,985 — an approximate 25 fold increase in traffic! This morning I got 670 pageviews by 10:00. Here are some other statistics… Continue reading “Is your website a ‘billboard in the desert’?” →

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Asus EEE PC black
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I have great hopes for this product, but the experience of this reviewer is not so hot…

“Everex’s CloudBook aims to one-up the Asus Eee PC with a larger hard drive and a flashy new operating system. 

Along with our review of the CloudBook, we’re taking a closer look by using this new UMPC to perform everyday activities from blogging to editing images to listening to music. Follow along with our CloudBook adventures.”

The hardware is from Everex and the OS is a version of Ubuntu optimized by the folks at Google for use with Google Apps for Domains and other applications.

Based on what I’m reading here, I’m more than underwhelmed. Let’s hope these folks get their act together. Click here to read the full article online…

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Social media is a tool that, on the surface, appears to only have use in certain areas- such as simple interpersonal relationships or business-to-consumer marketing.  However, experienced users recognize the benefits of social media in establishing and maintaining business-to-business marketing.  Those in marketing may claim, “Well, people who are into social media aren’t the audience we are going after.” or, “My distributors are too old- they don’t even use email!”  Certainly these arguments are true in some cases, but you will not gain anything if you don’t step out of your comfort zone and try.  Remember that your future network of distributors will most likely be experienced social media users.  If your business peers aren’t deep into social media, their interns and new hires will be.

Many people are still not sure what “social media” is.  Is it Facebook, Linkedin, or Youtube?  Actually it is not any one of these things on its own.  It is a means of communicating, sharing, and listening.  It’s all about sharing your ideas with your distributors so that both of you can be more successful.  Tips, tricks, and success stories help build relationships.  Social media, in all its forms, is all about posting questions to your networks, listening to ideas, and getting timely feedback to create better business partners.  It’s about sharing presentations and demonstrations to help build credibility in your industry.

Social media in the business-to business realm is all about connecting, learning, and growing- it is building and fostering relationships so that businesses can grow together. And remember, its all about the relationships!

via hcmiller.com

tommytrc @ HC Miller [the author of this post] belongs on your follow list! Not only is he the nicest guy in social media but he’s an ‘a-list’ content aggregator and creator as well…

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Image representing Brian Solis as depicted in ...
Image via CrunchBase

The key to zooming in on purpose and usefulness within social channels starts with the realization that there is no one audience. Nor is there a sustainable market for branded messages, marketing campaigns, or “Tweet/Like to Win” contests. Indeed, every channel created to represent the brand must carry a purpose, mission and corresponding value. One of the most common questions I’m asked by businesses of all shapes and sizes is, “What is the right number of accounts we should have in each social network?” Or, “How many profiles is too many or too few?”

The answer is as simple as it is revealing. Create the number of channels that meaningfully extend the focus of your business. Only create channels that enhance the brand message without diluting it. And make sure you have the capacity to keep all the channels relevant.

So what are the best practices for creating an engaging social stream? Let’s take a look at the traits of some of the more successful and regarded brands in the business.

via mashable.com

Another awesome article by Brian Solis. You’ll have to follow the ‘via’ link if you want to get all 14 best practices. My favorite? “Construct a Listening Framework: The best listeners make the best conversationalists. Build a listening framework that monitors the brands as well as the distinct conversations related to each account.” There are still a few seats left for my ‘Google Reader Rockstar’ event next week. Sign up here — you’ll get the listening framework Solis recommends…

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“Today, I was firing off a couple of emails when I noticed that the message count in the top corner said, “483 Messages”! I decided enough was enough and began doing some more research into managing my inbox. I checked up on lifehacker.com, 43folders.com, and a few others to see what was going on. One of the best words of wisdom I found, however, rested in Scott Hanselman’s blog.

Remember that your inbox is not storage, it’s a list of what hasn’t been categorized yet.

This is exactly what my inbox had become. Sure it was kind of handy to have every email that I have received in the past year within a couple of pages, but I thought there must be a better way to manage it. I will list a few of the resources that I picked up, but let me sum most of them up.” Click here to read more…

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via youtube.com

I don’t comment on politics often here, but here’s a politician who gets YouTube! Ex-reality tv star cum DA Sean Duffy is a former client of mine who looks like he’ll have a new zip code in January — although he’s no technologist himself, at least he understands the value of social media in getting his ‘awesome’ out. Comment, call or use the contact form to discuss how this applies to your business…

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via marketingsavant.com

I came across a mention of this today and thought it appropriate to share.  This is dated advice. Dated from 1885 to be more specific!

Thomas Smith, a London Businessman, wrote a guide called Successful Advertising in 1885. The sayings he used are still being used today and form the foundation for the Theory of Frequency in advertising and marketing.

  1. The first time people look at any given ad, they don’t even see it.
  2. The second time, they don’t notice it.
  3. The third time, they are aware that it is there.
  4. The fourth time, they have a fleeting sense that they’ve seen it somewhere before.
  5. The fifth time, they actually read the ad.
  6. The sixth time they thumb their nose at it.
  7. The seventh time, they start to get a little irritated with it.
  8. The eighth time, they start to think, “Here’s that confounded ad again.”
  9. The ninth time, they start to wonder if they’re missing out on something.
  10. The tenth time, they ask their friends and neighbors if they’ve tried it.
  11. The eleventh time, they wonder how the company is paying for all these ads.
  12. The twelfth time, they start to think that it must be a good product.
  13. The thirteenth time, they start to feel the product has value.
  14. The fourteenth time, they start to remember wanting a product exactly like this for a long time.
  15. The fifteenth time, they start to yearn for it because they can’t afford to buy it.
  16. The sixteenth time, they accept the fact that they will buy it sometime in the future.
  17. The seventeenth time, they make a note to buy the product.
  18. The eighteenth time, they curse their poverty for not allowing them to buy this terrific product.
  19. The nineteenth time, they count their money very carefully.
  20. The twentieth time prospects see the ad, they buy what is offering.

What do you think? How much of this do you think is still applicable?

via marketingsavant.com

I was just corresponding with Dana VanDen Heuvel and thanks to Gist and the Gist gadget for Google Apps, I noticed that Dana had just posted some really good content, so I swiped it [with proper attribution of course] and I’m sharing it with you here now. It looks like King Solomon was right — there is nothing new under the sun…

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“There’s never been a better time to take advantage of the expansive opportunities for online business development and growth that the internet affords. According to a Juniper Research study, the number of U.S. internet shoppers will grow at an average rate of 12 percent per year through 2010, resulting in more than $144 billion in online sales.” Click here to read more…

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…on the Top 10 Tactics and Tools for Social Media. Here’s my mindmap. What’s missing? You can grab the map and move it around or make it full screen if that helps by using the menu bar at the bottom of the map…

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…according to John Jantsch…

One of the most common questions I receive is “how do I get started blogging?” Some might find it a bit odd that I suggest a three step approach and the first two steps don’t have much to do with directly working on your own blog. No, I think you get started blogging by working on your blogging mindset and blogging presence. So, here’s my 3-step blogging start-up plan.”

Click here to read more…

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Aliza Sherman has a great post over at Web Worker Daily…

“How many times are you hearing the question, “Why should I engage in social media?” during your work week? I’m hearing it often, and it’s reminding me of 1995 and 1996, when clients — and colleagues — were asking “Why should I have a web site?” And who remembers when the question was “Why should I have email/a cellphone/a computer/a typewriter/a telephone?” OK, maybe none of you remember the old telephone question, but I heard that when the telephone was first introduced as a consumer product, most families were appalled with the concept of putting a phone into their homes and saw it as an invasion of their privacy. Yes, the telephone.

Here is how I try to explain to people who may not be convinced that they — or their company — should be using social media for business. Hopefully, this proves helpful to those of you in the position of reaching the decision makers who are ignoring social media outright and consider it a fad.” Source: Why Should I Engage in Social Media?

The diagram she refers to is a useful, thought provoking tool…

Personally, I’ve benefited a great deal from applying social media to my internet marketing strategy and I’m happy to share my ‘home bases and outposts’ strategy with my clients. When a customer’s needs are greater than what I can handle myself, I include my virtual team members Dana VanDen Heuvel, the thought leadership guru at MarketingSavant.com and the brilliant folks at Envano led by David Sauter. Whether your needs are great our small, one of us can help you figure it out…

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I’m talking social media with a barrista named John in the Starbucks in York, NE. Yes, there is one thank God — it’s one of the few redeeming features of this intersection called York where I have been sleeping while attending Husker Harvest Days. John noticed my Wisconsin license plate and asked where I was from. Turns out we’re from opposite ends of Kewaunee County and we’re chatting at a Starbucks in York. Small world…

Starbucks has the only reliable wireless internet connection for me to upload my content for AGCO so I have been a better customer than usual as yesterday I had over 2.5GB of content from the show to upload for the Envano team back in Green Bay. The social media campaign we have been doing for AGCO has been wildly successful. There are over 2,000 fans in Facebook now and we just added a beautiful YouTube channel for Husker Harvest Days.

I’m looking forward to heading back to Algoma with stops in Des Moines, IA and Galena, IL along the way. Soon I’ll be sharing some thoughts on the technology behind the AGCO social media success — including my huge disappointment with the iPhone and the way it performed on the trip! Be sure to fan AGCO in Facebook and follow the new YouTube channel in the meantime. If you’re curious about how all this works, give me a call @ (920) 486-4798. I’ll be happy to talk with you — I have 12 hours of driving time to kill on the way home… ;-)

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It’s always easier to just buy an ad.  There are people that will take your money and use it to produce a commercial, tv spot or print ad.  People will see your ad and a few of them may even come into your store if your ad has a good call to action or a coupon.  There is a problem with that strategy.  There’s an easier way that takes more work.  How can something be easier and take more work?

It’s more work to…

…gather contact information for all of your current clients or members.

…communicate with them about things other than your organization, store or “sale of the century”.

…talk to individuals instead of buying an ad for the masses.

But it’s easier to…

…get information of your current clients than to get information from strangers.

…talk about what’s important to their lives if you’re listening  on their terms (Facebook or Twitter come to mind).

…talk to individuals and get a response than to buy an ad and get the attention of the masses.

As with all things worth while it’s easier in the long run if you do more work in the beginning.

Stop throwing money at the masses and start talking to individuals.

via andytraub.com

Nice post by Andy Traub. For me, it’s like Guy Kawasaki says ““If you have more Money than brains, you should focus on Outbound Marketing. If you have more Brains than money, you should focus on Inbound Marketing.” [Just in case you’re not sure, ads are outbound, social media is inbound.] One of the things I love about social media marketing is that it takes more time than money! All of us are working hard in the current economy but imho, the smart ones are channeling that effort into inbound marketing in the form of social media. Questions? Feedback?

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So I launched my blog this past Monday and announced it to the Twitter world…got many retweets and congrats, and at least one blog mention (thanks again, Maggie!).

Now the reality sets in. I actually have to write this thing…it ain’t gonna write itself. After all, I don’t want to be like the bride who loves weddings and hates being married. I confess: this might be a big reason I haven’t started a blog before now. After all, it’s a commitment. I value my integrity, and now I’ve publicly said I’m gonna do this thing, I darn well better do it!

Sometimes, putting “it” out there, making it public, is a very good thing. I guess that’s why they tell you writing down your goals is so important. I think this blog is going to do some really good things for me.

• It will help me be more disciplined in when and how I write. Writing is hard work…just ask any writer who makes it look effortless (and there are a lot of them out there!). You can’t wing it; you can’t “mail it in.” Every writing teacher I ever had (not to mention every book in my writer’s library) told me the key to success in writing is to sit down and write. Regularly.

• It will force me to prioritize (or at least take a stab at it) what I want to think and write about. My really big challenge is that I have lots to learn and lots of things I want to learn, and lots of things I want to write about here. Even within the topic of learning – not to mention the peripherally related things that might end up on this blog. Ten minutes on Twitter and I’ve found 20 new websites to read…an hour on a live Twitter chat brings me new tweeps and a whole new set of links to explore. Simply by going through the process of prioritizing what’s important to this blog, I’ll get increasingly better at deciding where to focus, what to write about.

• It will help me refine my ideas. When I’m figuring things out, I’ll frequently “think out loud” (if you’ve ever been in conversation with me, you’ve likely heard me do it!). I “write out loud,” too…a sort of stream-of-consciousness process that helps me capture ideas and then mold them into something that makes sense (to me, anyway).

So even as I blog, I’m learning. Learning to be more disciplined, better at prioritizing, better at refining ideas. My big ‘ah-ha’ for the day…what was yours? Spend a little time thinking about it; you might surprise yourself.

via learningevangelist.com

I loved this post so much that I grabbed the whole post as a quote. The ‘learning evangelist’ nailed it! I blog as much for myself as I do my readers and clients — blogging is a discipline that benefits me. Far from being a waste of time, I find it actually makes me more efficient about doing ‘marketing’ because it allows me to chip away at it a little bit at time…

When someone asks me a question, if I answer them via email, I benefit only that person and perhaps the people in their circle. If I take the same content, however, and create an ’email to the world’ via a blog post, I can reexpress my own content over and over again to people and in ways I never dreamed possible!

Kudos to the ‘learning evangelist’. You get ‘it’ whatever ‘it’ is and I predict a long and happy blogging career for you…

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…or doing it for the first time? In either case Seth Godin has an interesting perspective to share:

“The most common question people ask me when they want a new website is, “If you were in charge of this, who are the 2 or 3 people you’d want to be sure to talk to – to help think through the issues, help us figure out who should do the work, etc.?”

The second most common question people ask me, “In addition to Apple’s site, are there 2 or 3 that you think are really appealing and work well for their business?”

I think these are perhaps the tenth and eleventh questions you should ask, not the first two. Here’s my list of difficult and important questions you have to answer before you spend a nickel” Seth’s Blog: Things to ask before you redo your website

Go to the source for the questions that Seth thinks you need to answer before you begin — it’s always good to ‘measure twice and cut once’!

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Here are a few ideas to help you along…

“Starting a new blog can feel like an overwhelming task. Not only does it involve either developing your own template (or finding a free one), creating interesting content that people will want to read, and making the blog SEO optimized, but once you’re finished developing that amazing new blog, you need to somehow get people to start visiting.

With millions upon millions of websites on the Internet, and with potentially hundreds of thousands focused on the same subject or niche that you are – developing an audience can feel even more overwhelming than trying to start a blog from scratch in the first place.” How To Start A Blog That Gets Instant Traffic

Go to the source and read the entire article — it’s worth it…

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When did you last check your email?

I’d bet it was within the last hour. Quite possibly within the last ten minutes. You might well have your inbox open right now, with message alerts jumping up at you.

Almost everyone I talk to feels that email takes up too much of their time. If you work for an employer, in a traditional office environment, you might have your email open from the moment you get into the office until the moment you shut down your computer at the end of the day.

(And you’ve probably checked email after hours or on the weekends, too.)

If you’re self-employed or work from yourself, it’s probably even worse. You might find yourself worrying about emails during dinner, or when you’re supposed to be having some family time.

The problem isn’t knowing what to do. You’ve read plenty of advice telling you to close the inbox, to avoid checking emails first thing in the day, and to get on with your key tasks first. But are you doing it?

via dumblittleman.com
There’s this and there’s the tool that you’re using to manage email. Have you looked into Google Apps for your business? I guarantee you it will make you more productive if you take the time to learn the paradigm! Comment, call or use the contact form to discuss how this applies to your organization…
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I love it when I find a quote to support my preconceived notions because if I say it, it’s just opinion, but if an ‘expert’ says it, well, it must be true. In this case a designer talks about web design…

“This one will probably get me into trouble.

I’ve worked as a graphic designer for over two decades and I’m not supposed to say this stuff. After all, it’s my job to make miracles. To wave my magic design wand and make a business look stronger, smarter, and more powerful than it really is.

Before I start dodging rotten tomatoes, though, I’m going to go ahead and say it out loud.

It’s a smart business move to have a well-designed website.

But good design — even great design — won’t solve all your business problems. Not even close.” Source: The Myth of Beautiful Website Design | Copyblogger

Although I do design websites, I think of myself less as a web designer than I do a social media technologist. In my methodology, a blog enabled website is a homebase or hub for a social media publishing network. My goal in design is simply to have the site load fast, connect to social media outposts and not be so ugly that a user won’t roll around on the floor clawing her eyes out. That’s it. As Pamela says in the quoted article “Don’t expect miracles from your graphic design. It’s definitely a valuable part of creating your business’s image, but it’s not a substitute for a sound marketing strategy.”

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“As a lead generation tool, your website provides a virtual wonderland of sales and marketing opportunities. It’s easily accessible, available 24/7, highly visible, and gives you the ability to present your company and services in your most positive light.

Plus, your site gives prospects the ability to find you whenever they need to. All this makes it one of the most powerful lead generators at your disposal.

So… is your website, this powerful lead generating machine, doing all it can to bring new clients to your doorstep?” Click here to read more…

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PDC is Personal Digital Coaching and it’s totally different than the kind of experience that’s being discussed here…

“I’ve been reading with great interest this past week as some of the leading web application companies discuss their philosophies regarding the providing of phone support for their services.” WebWorkerDaily » Archive Phone or Email Support – Which Do You Prefer? «

Give me a call at (920) 710-0790 or contact me through the contact page…

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