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Used properly, social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace can generate leads, create community with existing customers, and provide information on products and services. Great advice from the experts over at MetroplexInteractive |
Continue reading "How Social Networking Increases Leads and Sales" »
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Online marketing is part of the overall marketing mix. Treating it as the only element of your marketing plan ignores many time proven, and still relevant, marketing channels:
Tess Alps, chief executive at Thinkbox, emphasised the relationship between the internet and TV at this month's Westminster Media Forum Keynote Seminar: The Future of Advertising, observing that online brands such as Compare the Meerkat are seeing great success via the medium of television.
Continue reading "Online Marketing Should Combine TV and Web" »
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Web-print services are a great solution for printing brochures, flyers, tri-folds, business cards or even invitations. I've used them for years to print my Christmas cards. Because of the volume and scale of most online or web printing shops their costs are quite reasonable. Interesting that UPS has entered this market - presumably to compete with FedEx Kinkos.
Continue reading "UPS Ups Anti Againt FedEx Kinkos with Online Printing" »
Continue reading "How Green is Your IT - Free Tool from IBM Measures Impact" »
Forrester Research survey shows Americans continue to adopt technology, especially in the use of social media and mobile phones. Interestingly, even though recent reports show Facebook's membership is aging Forrester's report shows younger ages use social media more each week:
While media consumption among all Americans is split evenly between new and traditional media, on average, consumers younger than 40 spend almost 2 hours a week more with new media than they do with traditional media.
Continue reading "Americans Continue To Adopt Digital Lifestyle says Forrester" »
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Print advertising can still be an effective tool in your marketing mix and now that newspapers are suffering wildly you can bet last year's rate sheets have been cut in half or more. Bargain on print ads anyone?
Continue reading "Fire Sale on Print Ads as Newspapers Suffer from Decline" »
Just figuring out your company's online web site strategy for viewing on PC's? Forrester Research predicts most will access the Internet via mobile device by 2014.
In the next decade, the mobile Internet will replicate the success story of the PC-based Internet as social networks, widgets, search engines or company websites adapt for mobile presentation
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Are you reading this article from a wifi connection? You must be an affluent male between the age of 24 and 49. Now that advertisers know this - how will they better target you with ads?
A new survey of who uses Wi-Fi hot spots in coffee shops and cafes shows the audience is generally affluent, overwhelming male and mostly between the ages of 25 and 49.
Continue reading "WiFi Users Affluent Males Aged 24 to 49" »
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Enterprise Content Management (ECM) projects are popular cost-savers but how do you ensure a successful project whether internal or external? Good tips from Gartner:
At a time when IT budgets are tight and few can afford to spend anything they don't have to, Gartner's research vice president Tony Bell is offering some interesting thoughts on best practices for reducing costs.
Continue reading "Six Ways to Save Money in Enterprise Content Management" »
Enterprises will adopt Web 2.0 technoloies in coming years according to Forrester Research. This marks a trend already underway at many corporations.
The 5-year enterprise Web 2.0 forecast includes technologies such as social networking, RSS, blogs, wikis, mashups, podcasting, and widgets.
Continue reading "Enterprises Continue to Adopt Web 2.0 Blogs Wikis RSS and Mashups" »
Email marketing is making a dent in the US Postal Service's revenue. Advertisers are flocking to email marketing because of its high ROI, but will the Postal Service survive? Should it?
About 175 billion pieces of mail will be sent in 2009, down from 202 billion last year.
Social media is a consumer creative outlet that companies can leverage for feedback and inspiration - but keep in mind the aging population using these tools. Good news though from Forrester Research - the internet (and social media) is NOT a waste of time... whew!
Most growth in social networking is occurring among adults 35 and older, Forrester Research says. Four of five adults of all ages now use social media, including blogs, social networks and review sites, in some form at least monthly; half visit social networking sites.
Continue reading "Social Media is Outlet for Consumers - Product and Brands Should Engage" »
Here's a good list of ten reasons why traditional marketing is losing pace with online advertising and why advertisers should consider shifting more budget to online advertising.
Continue reading "Traditional Marketing Loses Impact, Replaced by Online Advertising" »
How to do increase sales when 60% of potential customers abandon their online shopping cart before submitting their order? Good tips on using online chat with customer support:
consumers abandon nearly 60 percent of all online transactions before they hit the "submit" button.
Continue reading "60% of Online Shopping Carts Abandoned - Live Interaction Helps" »
Looking to pitch social media as part of the marketing mix at your company? Use this recent and compelling survey information as ammo.
Looking to make the case for why your organization or clients should be using social media marketing? A survey last month, highlighted today in eMarketer, outlines the benefits that marketing executives cite as reasons to embrace the medium:
Continue reading "Why Marketing Executives use Social Media" »
Email marketing is an incredibly useful tool for any marketing and advertising campaign. The ROI's are extremely high when done even marginally.
53 percent of marketing budgets for US companies have increased in the past year, in the face of slow economic conditions. This extra budget is being used to fund high-return Online Lead Generation campaigns
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Business Process Management (BPM) seeks to optimize business processes and therefore it only makes sense that BPM should coexist in an environment adopting Lean Six Sigma (LSS). One leverages the other to merge business process and technology.
Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodologies can be used as the weapon to solve problems BPM uncovers.
Continue reading "Business Process Management and Lean Six Sigma - Coexist" »
A basic list of 5 reasons why businesses benefit from blog marketing and should be considered when creating a marketing plan for any company, brand, product or service.
Blog marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote goods and services on the internet today. Commonly referred to as business blogs, these sites are able to capitalize on their versatility and ability to interact with visitors to the site.
Online advertising is a great levelling tool for small and medium sized businesses and this latest study shows compelling results for SMB's to advertise online:
According to the latest report from the Kelsey Group, in the last 12 months, the penetration of online media for small businesses has increased from 73 percent in August 2008 to 77 percent this month.
Continue reading "Penetration of Online Media for Small Businesses Increases to 77%" »
Leveraging email marketing with your social media campaigns can create huge ROI's when compared with traditional media options:
A shift has taken place in corporate marketing strategy. If your brand, company or organization is like many others, you’ve moved away from traditional marketing strategies and are now focusing on strengthening your online efforts. Social media and e-mail campaigns, in particular, have both seen tremendous growth in recent years.
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Interesting argument:
Given all your employees are now online social creatures it stands to reason that these technologies will make their way into corporate applications as features.
Continue reading "Why Social Networking Will Go Enterprise Wide" »
Very interesting report from Gartner on technologies reaching an inflection point (meaning they are ready to take off). Of note are: web 2.0, cloud computing, Internet TV, virtual worlds and service-oriented architecture.
The researchers at Gartner Inc. released their 2009 Hype Cycle Special Report last week. The report, prepared by the organization since 1995, is at its core a comparative tool for risk judgment which, this year, looked at over 1,500 technologies and nearly 80 tech sectors.
Continue reading "Time is Now for Web 2.0, Cloud Computing, Virtual Worlds, Internet TV, SOA" »
Time to make sure those iPhone apps appeal to iPhone Mom's:
Mobile ad network Greystripe has coined the term "iPhone mom" to describe the 29.5% of iPhone users on its network that are mothers and household decision makers.
There's a brush fire bearing down on your small business. You've been told you have one hour to evacuate — which means you have one hour to come up with and execute a disaster preparation plan.
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Considering that every filing cabinet costs $25,000 to create and maintain moving the American health care industry to an electronic document management environment can create significant cost reductions - not to mention valuable data for health care providers to use in administering care options.
"The Obama administration’s focus on digital patient records to minimize medical errors and improve efficiency has promise, but will face significant obstacles."
Continue reading "Obama's Health Plan calls for Electronic Medical Records" »
Your competition is restarting their application development efforts to get ahead of the competition.
Nearly three-quarters of (6000) respondents, 71%, listed new product or software development as a top priority in their organizations. Cost-cutting also rated high, as did improving end-user usability.
Continue reading "Companies Spending More On Application Development" »
What have you posted to Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, etc that could cost you that potential job?
According to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, 45 percent of employers questioned are using social networks to screen job candidates
Continue reading "Employers Screen Job Applicants Using Social Networks" »
GM will begin selling automobiles on eBay this fall as part of its overall restructuring plan to lower operating costs (especially marketing and advertising). It will be interesting to see if GM's margins suffer from an inability to haggle, up sell, and use sales psychology to close the deal.
When it comes to online auto sales, there are no smiling, smooth-talking salespeople to help seal a deal.
So how can General Motors Co. sell more cars on EBay?
Continue reading "Top EBay sellers have some advice for GM" »
Only 21% of marketers say they are now adequately measuring the impact of social-media campaigns in terms of tangible results, according to the MarketingProfs poll results.
In corporate terms, social media is a very new concept. Not suprising to me then, corporations are not sophisticated yet in measuring their social media impact. Given the loosely defined universe of "social media" will good tools ever exist to measure the ROI of social media?
Continue reading "Social-Media ROI Elusive: MarketingProfs Poll" »
I was surprised at the importance companies place on social networking - seems very high to me - but even if inflated by 50% social networking skills are obviously very important.
It appears that knowledge of web 2.0 is a must for those in the workforce as more companies are looking for experience in social networking and blogging.
A new study from Pressroom, with help from the Public Relations Society of America, Korn/Ferry International and Trendstream, finds that...
Continue reading "Social networking skills important in the online marketing job hunt" »
Continue reading "Mobile internet audience continues to grow, says Forrester" »
Interesting (foundational) white paper on what business processes should be automated via business process management by Michael Hammer and Thomas Davenport:
Continue reading "Top 5 Considerations for Automating Business Processes" »
Great research from Forrester regarding success rates, ROI, and increasing focus on search engine optimization:
The powerful capabilities of organic search engine optimization (SEO) are now a highly sought after marketing tool by many companies that want to alert customers to their products or services by focusing on certain keyphrases that highlight these offerings. And though SEO has embarked on a meteoric rise in the past few years, other non-traditional forms of marketing are now gaining a great deal of well-deserved credibility as well. More and more marketers are using paid ads to hone in on a potentially profitable client base, while other more traditional channels, such as PR and print ads, appear to be becoming somewhat less effective.
What's fascinating about this innovation is not that a college student can view their room in 3d - it's that the retailer has provided an innovative tool that helps customers buy their products. Imagine if more retailers did this!
DesignYourDorm is a web-based 3-D interior design tool that allows college students to customize their dorm room interiors and purchase what they need online.
Continue reading "3D Tool Decorates College Student Dorm Rooms" »
Mass social networks such as Facebook and Twitter can be used as effective crowd sourcing tools, as brands seek to reach out to a larger audience and engage them, whereas niche social networks dedicated to a brand can offer deeper consumer interaction. It is a combination of the two that reaps the greatest results and ROI for businesses.
Continue reading "Mass And Niche Social Networks Enhance Social Media Campaigns" »
Manufacturers focusing on quantifiable ROI for advertising increasingly prefer online advertising - especially online directories/Web sites, e-mail marketing using in-house lists, and search-engine optimization.
While you may think of the manufacturing sector as "old economy," it's increasingly "new economy" in the way it conducts its marketing efforts. That's one conclusion to be drawn from a new GlobalSpec report that analyzes polling during the first quarter among marketing and sales professionals at manufacturing companies.
Continue reading "Manufacturers Shift Marketing Dollars Online" »
Studies are proving that in a down economy online advertising makes even more sense. This latest study from the experts over at Media Post
Study: Online Advertising Drives 9% Sales Gain For CPG Brands
A new study indicates that online advertising boosts retail sales of consumer packaged goods brands by 9% on average -- comparable with the lift from TV ad campaigns.
Continue reading "Online Advertising Drives 9% Sales Gain For CPG Brands" »
Interesting concept on community based feedback covered over at Springwise.com:
Marketers can now get early thoughts on new designs and concepts through Concept Feedback, which provides a simple tool for getting free, sincere feedback from like-minded professionals. more...
Continue reading "Online Community Gives Early Feedback on Marketing Concepts" »
Great research report on business process management (BPM) from Forrester:
The current global economic crisis is putting increasing pressure on enterprise architects to find new — and more cost-effective — ways of meeting business needs. One software category in particular offers proven solutions to help increase operational efficiency while...
Continue reading "How BPM Can Help The Bottom Line In Difficult Financial Times" »
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Good tips for selection a business process management vendor from CIO Midmarket:
Business process management (BPM) has seen increased interest during the past year as organizations look to automate and streamline business processes to wring out cost and become more efficient. So for those that are evaluating business process management solutions vendors and tools to map processes and integrate electronic workflows, we have compiled a list of questions to ask up front to ensure a good technology fit.
Continue reading "How to Select a Business Process Management Vendor" »
Great summary of newer DR options for small businesses over at FreshBusinessThinking.com:
Click here for more information on Disaster Recovery from KellyRShort.com
No doubt, as a small business owner, the thought of a major incident or disaster occurring sends shivers up your spine. If your business was affected by a fire, flooding, or perhaps vital IT equipment was stolen, what impact would this have on your business and do you have a plan in place if such events were to happen?
It's likely that today's uncertain economic environment may make failure more... read more
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, a Denial of Service attack must be the sincerest indication a web site (Twitter) has become wildly popular. As Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and other social networking sites become increasingly popular hackers will focus their efforts on disrupting these sites' functionality, stealing members' profile data, and finding other surreptitious methods of exploitation.
The denial of service (DOS) attacks which knocked Twitter offline and slowed down Facebook response times yesterday may have been designed to target just one individual.
Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, said the problems experienced by those trying to access the two sites, as well as LiveJournal and Blogger, may have been motivated by efforts to silence a Georgian blogger on the one-year anniversary of Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia. read more...
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Most small and medium businesses are not properly using disaster recovery techniques to protect against data loss. IBM is now offering solutions in that space for those leveraging IBM hardware/software:
Big Blue is now offering native replication as an option for remote office data storage in its ProtecTIER Deduplication appliances. ProtecTIER is an integrated physical appliance that includes a server, storage and data deduplication software.
http://www.eweek.com/showblog/54688/IBM-Upgrades-Disaster-Recovery-for-Deduplication-Appliances/
Very interesting survey by Gartner on expected business process management spend in 2010 - I've heard of many companies following the "do more with less" approach to technology during the current recession.
IT departments are expected to spend 10% more on business process management over the next 12 months, according to analyst Gartner.
Half of organisations surveyed in a poll of 500 business said they would spend 5% or more on BPM, while a third said they would spend more than 10%.
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