Customers Prefer Engaging Brands via Multichannel

Very compelling report from Forrester describing a new breed of consumers that are "less brand-loyal customers who seek to engage with companies across a multitude of new digital channels, such as on their mobile phones or via social technologies."

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Posted to Blogs | Social Networking

Social Media Imperative for Holiday Sales

This will be the first Christmas and holiday sales seasons since social media has become so important for driving sales. Companies are encouraged to focus on social media's ability to create word-of-mouth marketing in order to fully capture the benefits of social media during this year's holiday sales.

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales | Social Networking

SMB's Use of Social Media Difficult to Measure

Two recent studies offer conflicting information on the extent to which small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) use social media for generating leads and sales or engaging customers. However, I think the negative results must be downplayed since the survey questions were so vastly different.

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales | Social Networking

Business Case for Using Twitter

Great blog post over at MetroplexInteractive.com on how Con-way trucking is leveraging Twitter to recruit employees and streamline operations. Very useful for any company trying to figure out how to leverage social media to extend their brand or engage customers, employees and partners.

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Posted to Blogs | Social Networking

Cyber Monday: Just as big as Black Friday for sales

What are you doing to capture sales on Cyber Monday? Does your company plan for a special promotion or advertising campaign to increase sales on Cyber Monday (or Cyber Monday week)?

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales

How Social Networking Increases Leads and Sales

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

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Posted to Blogs | Social Networking

iPhone App Helps Road Warriors Find Convenient Places to Work

Great app for the road warrior - finding a convenient place to plug-in and work for a while in a strange town is worth its weight in gold. Thought Starbucks may not like the attention on other establishments! Wonder how you get your location added to the list?

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales

Sponsorship Covers Cost of Mariah Carey's Latest Album

Great concept - lower the cost of music albums by offering advertising. Mariah Carey's latest cd apparently uses this approach as described in this article from Springwise.com.

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales | Social Networking

34% of e-retailers say social marketing has increased sales, study says

Interesting article from Forrester Research showing impacts of social media efforts to the bottom line.

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales | Social Networking

Riding the Google Wave to Social Marketing

Google Wave is being touted as "the next big thing" in a lot of different ways... this article applies its benefits to social marketing.

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Posted to Blogs | Innovation | Marketing and Sales | Social Networking

Google now serving ads in iPhone Maps

Google Adsense is now baking advertisements into search results on the iPhone browser. Great idea and tool for advertisers who's target market relies on the iPhone. Next, Google should find ways to leverage Adsense to bake advertisements into iPhone applications (especially those that are location specific).

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales | Social Networking

Restaurant uses Social Media to Compile Wine List

Social media meets crowdsourcing. This restaurant used social media to build their wine list based on customer preferences and desires. Imagine that - the customers getting to pick what the store carries in merchandise!

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Social Media is Swell, But Don’t Forget the Basics

A lot of hype has been placed on social media lately but we must remember social media is part of the marketing mix and shouldn't be the sole effort of a marketing plan. This article recaps some of the basics in a short summary.

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales | Social Networking

Be Careful When Marketing to Teens Online

Interesting article from AdWeek on how adults don't understand teenagers nor how they use the Internet with an emphasis on how companies can better control how teenagers perceive their brand.

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MMS Gaining Mobile Advertising Popularity

SMS, or text messages, have been used for advertising for several years. But as MMS enabled phones gain in market penetration advertisers are starting to use this media rich technology for advertising. MMS offers many more options for customer engagement. This article provides research from a recent Aberseen survey.

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales | Social Networking

SMBs Not Prepared for Disaster

Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) are not preparing for disaster recovery according to a survey conducted by Symantec. A few simple steps could mean the difference between a company shutting down or thriving immediately after disaster strikes.

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Posted to Blogs | Disaster Recovery

SkyMall Increases Sales with Customer Re-engagement

As I've said many times before, the most successful marketing and advertising campaigns are the culmination of several tools and techniques working seamlessly together to engage customers and drive conversion. SkyMall gets it.

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales

Facebook Partners with Nielsen for Social Media Measurement

Facebook's revenue is created almost soley from advertising revenue. But how do you defend your ad rates without trusted metrics? Add Nielsen Ratings as your partner, of course. This will add the credibility that Facebook needs to drive ad revenue in the coming years from advertisers wary of social media options that usually lack traditional advertising metrics.

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Posted to Blogs | Marketing and Sales | Social Networking

Benefits of Business Process Management

Great summary of the challenges Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) face when considering business process management.

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Posted to Blogs | Business Process Automation

Google Host of Your Next Application?

Cloud computing lowers infrastructure costs for businesses while (sometimes) increasing flexibility, uptime, resiliency, etc. Google is one of the first movers in this space and certainly the largest. I can't argue with this article discussing how Google cloud computing might revolutionize the way we think of software and application development.

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Posted to Application Development | Blogs

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