by Guest Author on November 16, 2011
This is a guest post by Amanda DiSilvestro.
Many current CEOs and business owners often have more to worry about than the 50 ways social media can drive traffic to a website or the 100 ways to help improve a website’s page ranking. In other words, they have more to worry about than trying to keep up with the latest and greatest marketing tactics. However, CEOs and business owners do have to worry about hiring new employees.
As early as seven years ago, hiring a marketing department was fairly simple. You first get a background check, then you ask about their past experiences, how they plan to use commercials and newspapers to advertise, how they plan to measure success, etc., and the interview was over. Today, there are many new marketing outlets that a CEO has to take into consideration when trying to find a marketing professional who can keep up. In some cases, a good candidate may not have much experience with the latest tactics simply because they are so incredibly new. Marketing in today’s world is a little bit like being on a roller coaster. Everyone, no matter what age or point in their career, is along for the ride. This interviewing process has, therefore, become very tricky. To make matters worse, many CEOs and business owners are not up on the latest best practices themselves, so how can an interview go successfully?
This is a preview of Why Hiring a Marketing Department Has Changed—5 Subjects a Business Owner Must Now Consider in Every Interview.
Read the full post (1036 words, 1 image, estimated 4:09 mins reading time)
by Guest Author on November 9, 2011
This is a guest post by Lucy Hunt.
In the past, maintaining consistent branding was a much less complex exercise than it is today. Before the explosion of everything digital, sustaining branding consistency used to be a relatively straightforward task which involved one-way communication with little or no feedback from consumers via a handful of separate channels. Companies were more or less in control of when and how they targeted consumers and tasks involving branding tended to be mostly contained in-house.
In the last couple of decades, the spectacular rise of digital platforms and social media has revolutionized the way that brands reach their consumers and the way in which they interact with each other. With the huge number of communication channels available including emails, websites, and iPhone apps plus the ever-increasing number of social media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Google + and YouTube, it is no wonder that maintaining consistent branding has become somewhat of a challenge to the digital age marketer.
This is a preview of How Consistent Branding is Being Challenged in the Digital Age.
Read the full post (970 words, 1 image, estimated 3:53 mins reading time)
by Guest Author on November 2, 2011
This is a guest post by Preston Ehrler.
As a business owner, do I really have time to blog? I’m a business owner too, and I realize that we are already pressed to our limits for time. We are responsible for everything, including finding new business, working with our existing customers, interfacing with suppliers, running our books, and infinitely more. Attempting to convince a business owner that we should add yet another task can understandably seem like a herculean endeavor. For anything that is going to take more time, the rewards must be tangible and immediate. As many of us cannot clearly identify what the rewards are that can be reaped by blogging, it is not placed high on the list of priorities. It should be.
So, you ask, how important could blogging really be for my business?
My answer: Instead of spinning out a list of theories we’ve heard again and again, what if we looked at blogging from a different perspective? Employing a new paradigm by utilizing real data, what can we learn about how blogging, coupled with an effectively constructed website, can affect your company? What, specifically, can we extrapolate? How do we know blogging is worth the effort?
This is a preview of Is Your Business Worth An Extra Hour Per Week? 5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Blog.
Read the full post (1521 words, 2 images, estimated 6:05 mins reading time)
by Tamar Weinberg on October 25, 2011
A few years ago, a colleague of mine was given a tremendous responsibility to oversee the social media department at a prestigious well known NYC-based public relations firm. Less than a year later, she was sent packing up her desk, a casualty of a company that jumped into that shiny toy syndrome that people call social media.
As more companies jump into social media, they, too, hear that “social media departments don’t execute” which results in the failure of a social media department that was never meant to be. I’ll be exploring some of those reasons below.
Goal Setting
You could be the biggest and most well-paid social media consultant out there, but if you don’t know what the specific goals are for the client project, you should never sign an agreement with the prospective company. A recent statement of work I encountered read just like this:
- Manage and grow the our following on Twitter
- Manage and grow our fan base on Facebook
- Manage and grow our fan base on LinkedIn
- Possibly manage the presence on other platforms
by Guest Author on October 18, 2011
This is a guest post by Julian Rockwood, a product manager at Signal.
For small businesses, marketing often takes a back seat to day-to-day operations. They acknowledge that marketing is important; yet there are only so many hours in the day. Compounding the challenge: Consumer use of emerging technologies is moving faster than a typical business owner can keep up with.
That’s why at Signal, we’ve dedicated a piece of our business to providing an affordable and simple product to help small businesses leverage mobile marketing, social media and email to grow and nurture their customer base.
While it seems like there’s a new tool added to the marketing toolbox each day, these methods are gaining traction thanks to their captivating call-to-actions and instant-engagement capabilities. Based on our experiences, we’ve developed the following tips to help small businesses understand how to incorporate text messaging, mobile-optimized email, and QR codes to complete digitally.
Good Things Come on Packages
To see creative, effective uses of QR Codes in action, check out upcoming food manufacturers. Competition is stiff in the consumer-packaged-good (CPG) space. Small farms, chefs, and foodtrepreneurs jump through hoops to get a SKU of their product on shelves at the local grocery chain. They have to do something to differentiate themselves from the larger brands.
This is a preview of QR Codes, Email, and Mobile Marketing: Tools for Small Businesses to Compete Digitally.
Read the full post (1280 words, 3 images, estimated 5:07 mins reading time)
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Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast with a passion for all things tech and productivity. She provides consulting in internet marketing and manages Community Support & Advertising at Mashable. Tamar is also the author of 
Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart