It amazes me to see so much dry, ineffective marketing out there, much of it brought to market with large budgets and huge teams of professionals executing on it. And really, it’s quite easy to fall into groupthink when so many cooks are at play in the proverbial kitchen.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying you can’t execute effective marketing messaging, campaigns, etc. with a team-based approach. Quite the contrary, I’m actually saying a couple of things.
If you keep up with the local Austin startup scene or even with new social media services as they pop up, then surely you saw the announcement from Spredfast about their Social Media Campaign Management Dashboard product. It would easy to dismiss this as just another hype-laden announcement about a new social media tool, but that would be rather short-sighted in this case.
This week, Return On Now has the privilege of sharing with you a guest post by Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered Inc. right here in Austin, TX. In addition to running marketing, he also serves as a key “social voice” for the company. In that capacity, Aaron continues with his speaking, blogging, podcasting, and social networking activities with an eye toward creating awareness and lead generation for the company. Aaron co-hosts the Quick-n-Dirty weekly podcast with Jennifer Leggio, he maintains a social media blog titled Citizen Marketer 2.1, and he is well-known as a thought leader in online and social media marketing.
Today, since I’m spending this whole weekend celebrating my entry into a fourth decade on this earth, I’ll be skipping one weekend of self-posting to Return On Now. In my stead, I offer to you a guest post from my friend and colleague Julie Hunt. Julie is a Market and Competitive Intelligence professional, and one of the best strategic and analytical minds with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working in the past decade.
I recently learned of a cool new website via my ongoing social networking, and I was impressed enough with the idea to share with you here on Return On Now.
For those of you who interact with me on Twitter, surely you’ve seen the materials I’ve been sharing regarding the difficulty of getting your hands on financing or investment capital for your small business ventures. Credit markets have been squeezed to a pulp, it has been challenging to figure out how decisions are being made at the SBA, and angel investors and venture firms are being more cautious than we’ve seen in years when doling out funds. What’s an entrepreneur to do?
Public Relations (PR) is one of the best ways to get some quick and potentially extensive exposure. But PR is much more than just crafting press releases and paying to post them to the business wire. Unless you are a larger company that can afford to keep dedicated PR resources in-house, you can do it yourself or bring in a PR vendor to manage it for you.
With marketing having fundamentally changed over the past several years, it is becoming increasingly important to have an online presence. And this is a great thing for those of us who aspire to operate as solo entrepreneurs or very small companies. Now, your voice can be heard loudly and clearly by more people than ever [...]
Hello and Happy New Year! At risk of joining a cliche fest, let’s take a moment to consider my top five recommendations for things you should address first heading into 2010. I’ll work to keep this short and sweet so we can move on with our New Year holiday festivities.
Good morning, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays. As I sit here awake early with my baby awaiting everyone else (who, by the way, are still sleeping), I decided to share a little holiday cheer by way of my 10 commandments of B2B Social Media.
B2C and P2P are the easiest forms of using social media for most, and we have plenty of materials available in the blogosphere about how to attack those areas. But what I see lacking is a breadth of content about B2B.
So let’s start simple…10 important tips for how to use social media correctly in B2B.
Before I dive into more meaty topics, I want to take a quick second to talk about balance and perspective. No matter what your chosen business niche, business model, or revenue approach, the context under which you operate must always remain consistent and balanced. What do I mean by that comment?
This is best explained with a story…
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