BrandOne Marketing Services

Twitter Your Way to Success

For a lot of folks over 30, Twitter appears to be nothing more than a huge waste of time. No so for this Texas based small business owner.

Has Twitter been a boom or a bust for your business? We’d like to know!

13 Ways to Steal an iPad (Marketing Secret)

Something like a half million Apple iPads have been sold to date. It’s a remarkable number, considering that many people have yet to see an iPad, and many more have no idea of why they would even want one.

In this post, marketer Seth Godin generously shares a baker’s dozen of ideas on how to incorporate Apple’s ongoing success into your own marketing.

At the heart of it all, today’s marketing bears little resemblance to the largely superficial approach of yesteryear. Instead it asks us to dig deeply into our own talents, and to be more generous with our customers.

Today’s marketer is learning to give up some control, and let her best customers spread the word virally.

Today’s marketer must find clarity in what he stands for, for only in this clarity will the customer be clear.

Today’s marketer isn’t afraid to make some noise, take a chance and constantly create new art. Yes, there’s great art in business.

Why did a half million people spend $300 Million on iPads? The answer to that question belongs in your own company.

Social Media 101

I found this post online. It echos what so many small business owners are feeling at this moment in time:

Over the past couple of months I have been muddling my way through setting up a social media marketing “strategy” (both personally and corporately) here at SamePage. Currently, my strategy resembles the equivalent of a bunch of “digital post-it notes”:various bookmarks, URLs, links what-have-you scattered across my desk(top), browser, iPhone, etc. How do you scrape all this together into a coherent, useable, package? RSS, Twitter, tehnorati, ning, FB….a couple of times I have literally deactivated my FB account because I felt a responsibility to maintain it even though I found most of the content completely irrevelant.

IMO, there’s no one answer, or a single course of action that’s guaranteed to bring marketing Nirvana. What seems to apply best to small business marketers is outlined here:

1. Make your blog the centerpiece of your social networking strategy.

A “well connected” blog can feed content to other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, and do so automatically. Fresh content on your blog has the added advantage of improving ratings on search engines such as Google. Google loves fresh content, that is rich in relevant keywords. From a larger picture/strategic standpoint: the blog is the a natural place to generously share your expertise with the world and create a network of fans.

2. Tie your blog closely to your website and overall web presence.

The best thinking about the new web puts you in the middle of an online community. Websites built to function only as an online brochure likely won’t do much to generate buzz about your products and services.

3. Don’t start until you have something worth talking about.

No amount of clever online strategy will create buzz if your product or service itself is boring, commonplace or irrelevant to the world. As master marketer Seth Godin says, being remarkable is at the center of it all.

You Lie!

On Building Trust:

The world doesn’t trust you. It no longer believes the claims you make about your business. Why should it? Capitalism at it’s worst makes a big splash in the media almost daily. Product claims are made at the expense of our health and safety. Even everyday events drive home the point: pay more for a smaller package… EPA Highway Mileage (downhill with a tailwind)… immunity boosting cereal (it doesn’t), and the list goes on.

To an increasing extent, talking up your own company doesn’t matter.
Instead, listening seems like a better strategy these days. Find out what customers are saying about you, both online and face to face. The reality (not the spin) of your place in the marketplace is now more than ever the space where success lies. Beyond that, an attitude of sharing and generosity goes a long way today. By freely sharing your expertise, you provide value and build relationships. And you get people talking.

The Secret and Marketing Presence

A lot of folks treat marketing and advertising as a form of insurance, a sort of protection against the crisis day when the phone stops ringing and the nobody walks through the front door. In fact, that dreaded day came for many a business over the past few months; frequently their insurance policy failed to pay off.

Some wait until their showroom floor resembles a morgue before thinking about doing any marketing. They’re thinking: “Dear Lord, what will we do if this offer doesn’t pull in some business.”

Will your work be creative and innovative while a cloud of doom hovers over your head? If you’re advertising under duress, the universe responds in kind and brings you what you dread the most. It’s as if your customers can smell panic.

On the other hand, if you enjoy the marketing process, stay the course through thick and thin, proceed with positive long term expectations, keep a calm and quiet mind, and focus on remaining thankful for the myriad gifts we so often overlook, the universe will bring you more to be thankful about.

Here’s the math: Q=SM2. The quality of your work is geometrically proportional to your state of mind. It’s the Secret Formula for Success. Along these lines a quote from Eckhart Tolle:

When you are present in this moment, you break the continuity of your story, of past and future. Then true intelligence arises, and also love. The only way love can come into your life is not through form, but through that inner spaciousness that is Presence. Love has no form.