Toluu

The Cheeky Marketeer

Social Media, SEO, and B2B Marketing

Your Boss Fears Social Media - Now What?November 25

I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that many of the executives with whom I work just don’t get the whole social media thing.  Their concerns range from fear of the unknown, to discomfort with potential and current customers being a little too candid, to hesitation with creating something whose ROI they can’t measure in the typical black and white manner.

I don’t know if this is a typical attitude for Generation-X’ers, but in the midst of a tumbling world economy and a transformation from old forms of advertising to new, social media is more important than ever.  And it might just be you who needs to prove that to your bosses.

Have specific goals in mind.

You have used integrated marketing campaigns in the past; what were you trying to achieve with those?  Do you want to simply increase web site traffic?  Do you want more conversions on your web site?  Do you want your name to show up in major online publications?  Figure out what you want to achieve, and plan accordingly.  Then show the boss your ideas.

Be one step ahead of your boss.

I was recently asked about the potential for a blog on our web site, which is based in Java and therefore is not compatible with standard installations of Wordpress, for example.  Instead, I had chatted with a colleague earlier to find out about open source, J

On Business Cards: To Be Glamorous or Practical?November 12

I am expecting my new business cards to arrive by the end of this week.  I have a new title at work, and since I never got around to updating them with my last title change, I figure now is as good a time as any.  So my new title is there, along with my work phone, cell phone, email address, and company contact information, all plastered into the standard company business card template.

But for events, meetings, and introductions that are in no way related to my current company, I think it’s time that I had my own personal business card as well.  I’m talking about those instances where I run into friends from my past, where a potential consulting gig exists, where I want to pass my name and web site address out to people who might possibly be interested.

A recent blog post over at Ever-Real Modern Marketing inspired me with its display of seventy-two brilliant business card designs.  Now, I’m of the mindset that business cards should always be in the standard rectangle shape and in the standard size.  Many of the cards listed play by those rules, and I think the artists have done an amazing job working with colors, graphics, and typographies to make it their own.  I’m absolutely going to attempt the same.

In my experience, business cards that are sha

Social Networks and Virtual vs. ‘Real’ FriendsNovember 3

I was never the queen of the popular crowd.  But I do have a core group of really good friends, and I have a lot of other friends all around the world, all at different places in life, all with different personal goals, dreams, and aspirations.

And some of them I’ve never met in person.

With the rise in popularity of social networks comes a rise in virtual friend-making.  For me, each social network represents a different set of people that I ‘know.’

Facebook

Without question, this is the place through which I keep in touch with people that I’ve known personally in the past.  From buddies I’ve had since kindergarten, to those guys I met at a poker night last week at a mutual friend’s house, this is essentially my virtual uber-address book.  If I’m looking to send Christmas cards to people, I get their addresses here.  If I need to text a friend, but I just got a new phone that has none of my numbers in it, I get their phone number here.  If I want to check the status of my good friends’ relationship, I can find that out immediately here (and as an aside, why is everyone I know getting engaged at the same time?).  With the exception of less than five friends on my list of 400+, I have met all of my Facebook connections in real life, and I don’t intend to change that policy.

LinkedIn

Most of us have high expectations for our respective careers, and networking is key to success.  Thus LinkedIn came into the p

Music Marketing: It’s Time To Get CreativeOctober 30

When I grow up, I want to be one of two things.  I either want to be CMO for a major multi-national corporation, or I want to be a rock star (though the fact that I am an average guitarist at best is irrelevant).

Many have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of the latter.  Most will fail.

In the good ‘ol days of the music business, getting your song played wasn’t all that complicated.  DJs and studio producers were easily accessible; you didn’t even have to look pretty to become a huge star.  In the late 1950s, it seemed as though all you needed to was create a song with a fast beat, and you had a hit on your hands.

Elvis Presley was discovered after doing a cheap studio recording of “My Happiness” that included his voice and his guitar, nothing else.  Buddy Holly played local clubs and talent competitions until he opened for Bill Haley and the Comets, upon which he was offered a sweet record contract.  Little Richard made it big thanks to an impromptu rendition of “Tutti Frutti” at a local recording studio.

Today, it takes the right connections to make it in the music industry … or it takes creativity.

Realistically, few of you know ‘the right people.’  And in order to get noticed and actually sell your music in this vast pool of artists trying to hit it big, you’ve got to do something notably different from everyone else.

OK Go, a geek-rock group from Chicago, perfectly reflect the kind of creativity one needs in the music business.  Veering far from the norm, the band went relatively unnoticed until it released the video for its first official single, “A Million Ways,” in 2005.  But it didn’t release it via the typical music video avenues.  Instead, they let it loose on YouTube, where it became a viral phenomenon.  In 2006, OK Go created a video for the single “Here It Goes Again,” shot in one take as the members of the band performed synchronized moves on four treadmills.  Insane, no?  But it worked, and OK Go walked away with a Grammy and the number two album on iTunes.

Laura Warshauer, an acquaintance of mine from university, has been playing guitar and singing for ages on the road to musical success.  Now signed to Island Records (the same label that deals with Fall Out Boy, Bon Jovi, and Melissa Etheridge), Laura is promoting her new album the grassroots way: by wandering around New York City on foot with her guitar, as seen below.  The success of this has yet to be seen, as the campaign has just begun, but talk about getting yourself noticed!

Your Brand - Not Your Logo - Builds the BusinessOctober 28

A lot of discussion has been going on recently about Best Buy’s and Pepsi’s decisions to try out a new ‘look.’  Whether or not the failing economy has anything to do with it, the fact of the matter is that it seems that both companies are simply missing the point completely.

Yes, a logo design change is necessary sometimes.  My company went through the same thing last year, when our original logo was deemed ‘amateur’ and we realized the difficulties in scaling the image in different environments because it was simply too detailed (and don’t even get me started on how it looked on polo shirts).  Our new logo is much simpler, more linear, and cleaner, and it fit in well with the repositioning of our brand on the marketplace.

But that’s just it.  The logo redesign was but a minor part of the overall brand overhaul.  The latter in itself is a difficult task to achieve, and a dangerous one at that, but that’s not the point of this post.  I’m trying here to reaffirm the notion, so often debated by marketing experts, that changing one’s logo rarely impacts a brand and thus rarely helps with market share.