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Business

Are Your Fans Talking About This?

by Eric Brown · October 21, 2011

Is bigger really better? Social media marketing is a low barrier-to-entry business and every small to medium business that hires that 20-something for social media, “because they must understand this stuff,” suffers. They rarely know how to generate scalable numbers. Said different, they typically do not know how to generate more leads for your business that wind up positively effecting the bottom line.

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Always Listening to the Customer is a Race to Mediocrity

by Eric Brown · September 27, 2011

As a business owner, do you care what people think about your business and the decisions you make? More specifically, do you care what your customers think? Perhaps the short answer is, “yes,” however is that holding you back? With the onslaught of social media and review sites, everyone has an opinion, and it is easier than ever to be a critic. The plethora of social media platforms has provided folks with a megaphone to chant their dislike about this or that. The adage of “The Customer Is Always Right” burrows into our fear factor and may stifle innovation and necessary change to your business model.

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35 comments

Content Is Not Created Equal

by Eric Brown · September 7, 2011

Content is everywhere and has become a marketing sword for businesses of all shapes and sizes. As traditional advertising effectiveness declined, the popularity of writing articles and publishing articles went wild. It was for a while a fairly easy SEO trick and tool to help Move the Google Needle for more traffic to your web site.

Content Marketing still is one of the better tools in your bag of tricks, however getting folks to read your stuff gets harder every day as more and more things garnish our customers and prospects attention.

The Content Marketing Umbrella

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3 Questions to Ask Before Jumping on a Marketing Bandwagon

by Andrew Hanelly · September 1, 2011

It’s tough not to fall victim to me-tooism in our competitive media landscape. There are oohs and ahhs to reap, awards to win, client and board expectations to exceed and egos to stroke. So we see something shiny and we chase it. We see a toy and call it a tool, and make it part of our marketing program.

And who can blame us? We’ve got boss/client/coworker/thought-leader/consultant/blogger/friend/avatar telling us we need to embrace (whatever piece of) technology before it’s too late.

But what if it’s too soon? What if there’s never a good time to adopt? What if we’re adopting a technology or approach that could fundamentally shift the relationship we have with our audience in a detrimental way?

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9 Ways Your Business Needs To Change To Become Social

by Ilana Rabinowitz · August 16, 2011

Social media has changed the way we do almost everything.  We make buying decisions, find jobs, play games, listen to music and learn socially.   But for business it’s clearly been a more challenging shift.  Engaging in social media requires a fundamental change to the way businesses function and think. No wonder so many are slow to embrace social media and devote budgets to it.

The challenge is that most businesses are stuck in traditional thinking and marketing that doesn’t translate well to a social atmosphere, on- or off-line. While many people are advocating the evolution of businesses to becoming, “social businesses,” few people are outlining specific changes that will help them.

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Join Me In Atlanta For The Social Media Integration Conference

by Jason Falls · July 20, 2011

It’s one thing to concoct a great social media campaign, using all the most effective tactics and best practices. It’s another to be able to integrate those strategies and tools into your existing business structure. Social media integration and execution is what drives results, so it’s important to have a solid understanding of the implementation of your social media plan.

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3 comments

When You Are Not Their Boss

by Eric Brown · July 6, 2011

I am starting to rethink about our whole social media strategy approach for small businesses. Not so much with our own companies, but for our clients. It has taken me an inordinate amount of time to discover the constraints of “not being their boss,” something consultants and agencies a like are challenged with constantly.

I have spent most of my marketing life on the other side, as the buyer of marketing and branding services. In an odd chain of events over the last several years, that has shifted to the consultant and marketing studio side. I have wrongly made the assumption that when we sold the marketing ideas and strategy to the boss’s boss, the gal or guy at the top of the pyramid and the person paying the bill, all was well. Not really, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

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10 comments

Should We Be Un-Integrating Our Marketing?

by Eric Brown · June 14, 2011

Ever notice that there are always two camps: One that wants to split things down the center and be all things to all people, and the other that is radically on one side or the other sucking down the Kool-Aid with a giant straw?

As of late I have found myself trying to be closer to the center, saying such things as you need an integrated marketing approach. I think that is a mistake. I should be asking, “What marketing venue or platform are you going to stop doing, before you start doing social media marketing?: The best way is NOT an integrated marketing approach. Businesses simply cannot add more things. More marketing equates to spending more money. A more appropriate question would be, “What are we going to stop doing in order to allow room for worn out ways to pass and new ways to emerge?”

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33 comments

Inspiring The World With $10 And A Laptop

by Jason Falls · May 30, 2011

Greg Hartle is an amazing guy. He had it all, lost it all, almost died, got healthy, gained it all back and then decided to do something strange to most of us: Gave it all up. He’s currently touring the country, starting with nothing but $10 and his laptop, eschewing previous networks and financial resources, depending upon his own ingenuity, creativity and the generosity of others, to show that it doesn’t take having friends or money to create something amazing.

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