Well last weekend Coastal Carolina AAF held it's annual ADDY Awards Show and we're proud to announce we won a few things! 

Big news of the night was winning "Best of Interactive" for our website for Better Brands! The award is awarded to the best overall interactive/website and we are very honored to have recieved the award! This makes 3 years in a row that C+C has brought home a "BEST OF SHOW" award! There was a lot of really great websites entered this year and for us to be selected really means a lot and speaks volumes. We also have to give props to our partner in the project, Intercoastal Net Designs! They really stepped up and did a great job on the programming. We gave them a big challenge and they hit a home run! 

The Better Brands website is a wonderful and fun trip through the world of everything beer! Visitors can look through the vintage beer ad collection, watch over 40 classic beer commercials, find cool screen savers, photo galleries of party pictures, party tips, swag shops, and a really cool beer handbook! The beer handbook is loaded with information on over 40 beers with nutritional information and food pairings. 

Check out the site at www.budbeach.com.

We also brought home Gold Awards for our work on Body & Soul Spa and Fittness and for Soulo Sport. Both recieved Gold Addy's for their overall mixed media campaigns. This included work for outdoor, print, collateral, and interactive. Great campaigns we are very proud of. 

We love the awards, but the awards are not possible without great clients that believe in you and the work. So we want to give a big THANKS to all our clients that continue to let us do what we do best! Like we always say, "great clients = great work"!

Here's a really great article I ran across on what it means to be "remarkable" to our clients. Hearing someone say "remarkable" often reminds me of the old Little Rascals episode where Spanky is babysitting the babies and one little baby keeps saying "remarkable" over and over again. Wouldn't be great if we could get our clients to say that about us over and over again!

In today's market we all need to remember what that means to our clients and how very important it is. Bryan Eisenberg lays out a great outline for what it means and how we can get back to being "remarkable". I hope you enjoy!

Why It's Important to Be Remarkable in Marketing

"You want great marketing but nobody can be creative enough to compensate for the problem you have. The product you have been offering for the past 10 years just isn't that remarkable, in fact, very few people truly even care if it exists." When I told this to the new CEO of a company I advised on a call this past week, I knew he wouldn't like hearing it. I also knew that he was intellectually honest enough to agree. Would you be?

We were reviewing new marketing collateral his company had just developed. My question: "Who cares?" I wasn't being callous. I was truly asking how this addressed a deeply felt need of his potential and actual clients. His marketing staff's copy came off like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons, "Wa wa wa wa wa wa."

There were at least three historical issues wrapped in this company's marketing woes:

1. The old management's communication style preference
    
2. Who they spoke to in their target market, dicated by that communication style 
    
3. The product and story they told about it were not remarkable

Your Story Gets Told the Way You See It

The founders of a company tend to set the company off on a trajectory that they envision and set. They see a need in the marketplace or come up with a product idea and set a story in place on how the market is going to receive it. Too often, they tell the story from their inside-the-bottle point of view and they never really get the proper results they desire. It's often hard to take your customer's point of view and tell them the story the way they need to experience it.

Great marketers and sales people have the ability to craft great stories. However, this company was extremely people oriented, founded to help companies better understand their customers. The founders' communication style was highly "humanistic;" they were all about understanding and caring for people. I consider many of them good friends today and they are among the nicest people I know. So, they took their humanistic type product, told their story in a humanistic style, and the only people who cared or ever responded to their pitch for the most part were other people who preferred a humanistic approach.

There is nothing wrong with that per se. However, the majority of the budget for their product category was in the hands of decision makers with "competitive" and "methodical" personality preferences. While they kept developing their product to be more humanistic, their competitor took their equally less than remarkable "humanistic" product but told the story in a "competitive" point of view. Guess which one has the larger market share?

You Can't Be Remarkable by Imitation

It's often not enough to recognize you are speaking to the wrong persona or segment and just change your communication style. It typically won't come off as authentic and your marketplace will see that you are just trying to copy your competitor. You still need something remarkable to share.

The new CEO of this company came in and had the development team work on an improved solution. The new solution is excellent and has the potential to be remarkable, depending entirely on how they decide to craft their narrative now. This one change can move this company from being a boring competitor in its current market to a natural leader in a new and emerging marketplace. However, it must make the change internally and externally to tell a new story and share it in the right voice. No amount of great marketing will resurrect a lousy story and unremarkable product, but in today's world of "word of mouth," where social media is a top priority for marketers and the board room, you need your customers to share how remarkable your solution is. Will they want and be able to share your story?

Planning for Word of Mouth

My good friend Kevin Ertell did a fabulous job in his blog this week describing how planning for word of mouth may be the missing link forgotten about by marketers in the customer engagement cycle. He recommends that marketers plan for "satisfaction" and "referral" steps. As his post says, "Satisfaction is simply the foundation, and the minimum requirement, for a continuing relationship with customers."

Aiming for "satisfaction" isn't enough. It's more effective to have marketers think in terms of "delight." By adding "referral" as a step, it might misalign marketers into thinking they can trigger the referral if they just enable it, where we both know that when a customer is delighted (or angry) they share it today.

If you truly want to persuade people you must first delight them. We can learn a lot about this from Apple's marketing. Seth Godin offers 10 tips on how to be remarkable as well.

How to Trigger Word of Mouth

When delivering a keynote presentation last week about social media to small and medium sized businesses, I told them nothing different than what I tell larger clients. Hopefully, they can now turn their agility into an advantage. Remember, it's important to be remarkable! Think of it like Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz"; the power to capture social media attention didn't rely on the wizard (social media gurus) or the ruby slippers (the social media tools), but rather that they had the power inside them the whole time - they just needed to be "remarkable!"

I'm always looking for great tips to pass on to our fans! Here's a really great post I ran across on Mashable about social media campaigns about 3 very important things everyone needs to know about creating a social media strategy. B.L. Ochman makes some really good points that we all forget about establishing effective social media campaigns. These are important notes that not only we need to understand, but points we need to be sure our clients know as well. Social media is not an easy, cheap, quick fix. It takes team work, solid strategies and objectives, and it doesn't happen over night. And just because you can create a facebook page for free doesn't mean you'll have social media success. It takes upfront thinking and man hours to really make it work. Hope you enjoy!  

3 Things You Need to Know About Social Media Strategy

Companies large and small are rushing to understand and get involved in social media. But most of the agencies and consultants who are being paid to establish social media campaigns for corporations are afraid to tell their clients three things they don’t want to hear.

1. Everyone Must Work Together

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In most big companies, IT, digital, marketing and sales not only don’t work together, they compete with each other. Until they start collaborating as a team, you will not succeed in social media.

For example, I recently handled social media advertising for a major retail chain’s holiday microsite. The promotion was conceived by the digital department and involved augmented reality. But the IT department refused to allow a link from the homepage to the microsite because the microsite’s design was done by an external agency.

Further, the marketing department refused to allow a dedicated e-mail to go out to the company’s mailing list, and when placed in the company’s normal promotional e-mail, the link to the microsite was lost in a sea of weekly specials.

These hurdles made it very hard to drive traffic to the microsite.

But more than that, this lack of internal collaboration and contact makes any kind of social media involvement virtually impossible.

A company that hasn’t learned to listen to its own employees, and encourage them to collaborate internally, is not likely to succeed in integrating social media tools into its marketing mix, no matter what agency or consultant they hire.

2. Top Management Must Be On Board

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If the direction doesn’t come from the very top, managers, who have myriad reasons to fear change, will hang on to the status quo.

Despite the best intentions of agencies and consultants, social media integration is bound to meet huge resistance until top management says it’s OK to spend time and money to integrate it into the company’s marketing and culture.

Example: The marketing team of an international manufacturer of electronics wanted to know how the company could begin to use social media and we discussed the many possibilities.

Listening and responding to what customers are saying about the brand in social media can supply good intelligence and give the company a chance to interact with customers.

“Our management doesn’t want to listen to customers,” the PR director said. “They want to talk to them.”

However, that doesn’t work anymore. The status quo is dead. Any company that isn’t willing to listen to customers and be nimble and quick enough to respond, and, when necessary, change, will soon be unable to compete with smart, tech-savvy companies that can turn on a dime.

Willingness to change is the new bottom line for every business today. But top management has to buy in before change can begin.

3. Don’t Expect Overnight Success

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Sure there are videos that go viral, contests that attract a lot of buzz, and Facebook pages that get a lot of fans. But what comes after those efforts?

After the tools change (and they surely will) how will social media fit into the company’s overall strategy and help it reach long-term goals?

Example: Smart companies look at the long-term. The Fiskateers, now in its sixth year, is the brainchild of digital agency Brains on Fire, for their client Fiskars.

With the scissors brand losing market share to foreign knock-offs, the company enlisted several actual crafters to blog, attend events, and represent the brand to customers as part of a new community strategy.

“If you empower your customers to become your evangelists, you’d better be prepared to continue it,” says Brains on Fire’s Geno Church. “It’s permanent when you engage in this type of marketing.”

Once you have created the community, listen to it. Fiskars made several changes to its products based on what it discovered through its Fiskateers community. Doing so helped build customer trust and loyalty.

Where Should Your Company Start?

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Realizing that employing social media in the marketing mix is a long-term commitment to change, the best way to start is to pick manageable, measurable goals.

Pick a small number of social media goals for the coming year. Some possibilities:

- Turn the company newsletter into an internal blog and give all employees the ability to contribute
- Establish a social media policy for employee participation in social media on company time and beyond
- Let employees vote on the best ideas suggested by other employees
- Resolve to respond to customer service issues within three hours, via social media

Don’t try to do all of these things at once. Pick the ones that are most likely to be possible for your company to start and sustain.

The president is promising us change, we're bailing out the banks, and now we've got cash for clunkers. Our economy seems to be turning the corner but I still feel the fear in the air from consumers unsure how or when the "stimulus" is going to start kicking in. Is this "stimulus" really going to work? Is this really the kind of "stimulus" we need? 

I think the first thing we need to ask is what really drives our economy? Is it money? Is it lowering interest rates? Is it Banks opening up more lines of credit? Or is it something bigger? I believe it's ideas. Fresh, creative, provocative, powerful, ideas. We're living in an age of ideas and our economy is driven by the development of new ideas. From new products like the "snuggie", to movies, music, novels, art, and breakthrough advertising. ideas are what drives our economy and the worlds. 

In advertising, big ideas are what helps brands buy the "mindscape" of consumers. How much "mindscape" an idea can purchase is relative to the size of the idea. Small ideas buy little tracts of "mindscape" that are eventually consumed by bigger, more powerful, ideas. Keep feeding that big idea and soon it's governing consumer thoughts and actions. The bigger, more creative, and powerful the idea the more "mindscape" it occupies and the more influence the idea has on the consumer.

Advertising legend Bill Bernbach once said "nothing is more important than bringing spirit and life to an advertisement."

A great deal of advertising these days lack that spirit and life.  I once read a great comparison of today's advertising to Frankenstein's monster - prior to getting lit up by lighting and bringing it to life. 

Just like the monster, an advertisement can come to life when it gets lit up by great idea. All at once it became larger than life, powerful, scary, and misunderstood. But at the same time very human with compassion and empathy. And guess what? Those are also the qualities that make great advertising. 

But those qualities are not what make the advertising great. It's the idea that make's it great. A powerful idea that's larger than life, scary, and misunderstood. An idea that can cut through the clutter and connect with people. 

To create ideas, you must free yourself from everyday life and live in the land of "what if". You cannot be tied down by the reality of everyday.  Just like "Nero" in "The Matrix", you have to remember "there is no spoon". 

So where are these ideas that are going to stimulate and jump start our economy? Somewhere inside you! Finding them will take understanding the landscape and having clear business objectives for success. Then listen, listen to those crazy voices inside your head, the ones we all try to ignore at times. Those are "ideas". Powerful ideas that want to be set free. Powerful, creative, and innovative ideas that will once again stimulate our economy. 

 It's a new year and I was wondering who is really ready to get serious about social media? Getting serious means more than just joining facebook and checking it once or twice a week. I've got a few friends and clients that all think social media is a great tool for marketing and want to use it. But when it comes to the time needed to truely invest in it they grossly underestimate and eventually feel over whelmed and lose interest. Social media really isn't something new, it's just an extension of what we've been doing for years when we create brands and try to connect those brands to people. It's just another way of bringing that brand to life and creating a connection to the consumer. And it's not a quick fix, like building a brand it takes time and it takes a strategy for what you really want to accomplish. 

But if you are ready to get serious about using social media in 2010, then here is a great post I ran across on Social Media Today(a great little site!) by Amber Naslund about "10 Ways To Get Serious About Social Media". She has some really good points that might help excite and focus you again on your social media strategy! 

10 Ways To Get Serious About Social Media.

If this is your year to buckle down and tackle a social media strategy, it’s time to get serious. The time for oohing and ahhing is rapidly drawing to a close, and instead your efforts have to become about practical, methodical application.

Here’s 10 ways to get serious about social media this year. There are plenty more, too. Add yours in the comments.

1) Quit counting fans, followers, and blog subscribers like bottle caps.Think, instead, about what you’re hoping to achieve with and through the community that actually cares about what you’re doing.

2) Learn how to measure stuff, and quit making excuses for why you can’t do it. Katie Paine’s blog is overflowing with stuff. Here’s some metrics you might consider if they’re applicable for your goals. And here’s how you canstart setting measurable objectives.

3) Learn what case studies can and can’t do for you. Stop saying there aren’t enough of them and go Google the term “social media case studies” or spend a few minutes on my Delicious links. Then, get busy writing your own.

4) Understand the difference between making a business case for social media and chasing the next and greatest fad. If you don’t understand how to explain where social media impacts areas outside the business besides your own, make a concerted effort to learn.

5) Stop lauding social media as the thing that’s going to fix it all. Fix your business first. And read Jay Baer’s blog (including this post) for a reality check.

6) Approach social media methodically, and with the same care that you would any other business investment you make. Tamsen McMahon will help.

7) Quit waiting for the water to be perfect before you get in. It’s not going to be, ever. Try something that makes strategic sense for your business. Julien Smith articulates a bit about why waiting for one tiny thing is often what holds us back.

 Think long term, and commit to it. That doesn’t mean some of your experiments can’t be finite, but the overall approach has to be for good. Mitch Joel even says so.

9) Focus on what you’re good at. Know the core of your business, and make that the center of your work, especially through the amplifier of social media. Chris Penn reminds us of the importance of this, as he’s apt to do.

10) Recognize that potential missteps shouldn’t paralyze you into inaction. Acknowledge that there are ways to recover from, say, a misguided communication effort. Having a plan to pick yourself up is the key, rather than trying to avoid failure at all costs (including stagnation).

What else would you add? What’s your buckle-down strategy this year, and how are you turning your approach from theory into application? Share your ideas, favorite posts, and strategies in the comments.

When buying a home, who is actually making the decision? Is it the man or the women making those major financial decisions? My experience and research has always lead me to believe that the women is usually the one leading the process while it's the man that has the final say. But based on the numbers, it looks like the ladies have about 80% say in all the decisions! Here's a great blog post I was sent from Mike Blaney where he gets into the whole buying process between men and women. Interesting stuff. 

Men and Women Buy Homes Differently? Venus and

Mars again?

A recent survey of 1,000 individuals to discover how much men and women differ in the home-buying process by Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC produced some expected results for marketers. Men and women make purchase decisions differently.

Communications Research (ICR) were commissioned to  ask the following  questions such:

Here's another great little article I ran across about measuring social media. It's an ongoing question we continue to hear from clients who are used to measuring ROI for all their marketing and it's been tough for them to get their hands around. But measuring social media is different from other media and you can't just rely on your fan numbers or followers. Gary Stein does a great job outlining a few of the biggest mistakes made trying to measure social media. Hope you enjoy! 

The Five Biggest Mistakes in Measuring Social Media

 I know: You feel like you're already taking social media seriously. You're Tweeting and posting, blogging and following. You've got accounts on every site that allows you to share and you've got them all linked together. You're out there and you're social.

Big deal.

It doesn't take much effort to set up an account on most social sites, and the effort involved in putting out content is fairly minor as well. With social media, success isn't 90 percent showing up.

Just showing up doesn't get you anything. It's time for brand marketers to show up to social media with a purpose and goal, as well as a clear strategy on how to get there.

First, become extremely serious about measuring the effort you're putting in and determining the value you're getting out. Several companies begin just the early stages of measurement, but -- just as frequently -- their overall approach to measurement goes horribly wrong.

So, to help you determine how to best measure social media, let's examine five ways people go wrong when measuring social media. I'll also give some tips on how to do things better.

Big Mistake No. 1: Assuming Your Fans/Followers Will See a Post

The biggest siren song in social media is assuming that your number of subscribed fans (i.e., to a Facebook page) or followers (i.e., to a Twitter stream) is your audience, and every time you post something, you get to count each one of them as an impression. That just simply isn't the way that people use social media.

Someone you count as a follower may only log on once a month. Or, she may be a fan to 175 other pages and your post may get washed away in a deluge of other posts. Don't count your number of followers as your number of impressions.

TIP: Watch the growth of your followers and pay attention to the deeper analytics provided by Facebook Pages. That will give you greater insight into the engagement you're generating from your page.

Big Mistake No. 2: Failing to Account for Overlap Across Networks

Speaking of fans and followers, another big mistake is double counting people. Don't take the number of people who follow your brand on Twitter and the number of people who are subscribed to your YouTube channel and then add them together. There's a high possibility that many are the same people. Adding everyone up gives you a good, high number, but there's a good chance you're over-counting.

TIP: Put out a short survey on one (just one) of your pages and ask people if they're connected to you on multiple sites. This should give you a good percentage of people and then you can reduce your overall count by a reasonable amount and have a more accurate count.

Big Mistake No. 3: Failing to Count Clicks

Ahhhh! Honestly, this one drives me just a little crazy.

A growing number of e-commerce sites are using sites like Twitter and Flickr to drive traffic. Most sites doing this say it works extremely well. Or, rather, they believe it works extremely well.

They don't actually know because they aren't actually counting the number of clicks that their social media efforts are generating. They're simply dropping URLs into tweets (and things) and that's it. They have no idea if the post actually generated any real value.

TIP: Use a URL shortener like bit.ly to keep track of the clicks you generate. This may be the easiest and most effective tip in this entire column.

Big Mistake No. 4: Disregarding Search

Increasingly, social media and search have converged. It's remarkable.

Last month, the number-one thing you did on Twitter's home page was log in. Today, the number-one thing you do on the Twitter home page is search. You actually have to click to get to the log in.

To measure the value you're generating from social media, therefore, think about how your brand shows up in search. You never know when a consumer will pop your brand name into a social search engine and make a decision based on what comes up. If you only pay attention to what people are saying right now, you're missing a long tail of value.

TIP: Use tools like SocialSeek that enable you to get a very complete picture of everywhere your brand is being mentioned and capture that data.

Big Mistake No. 5: Focusing on Followers

Whenever we measure online activity, we tend to focus on the number that is easiest to get. In social media, that number is fans or followers.

The problem with that number is that it, like many other raw numbers, is deceptive. Why? It doesn't take into account the medium's characteristics.

Click a button to follow or become a face is very easy and very low-impact for the consumer, so they do a lot of it. It's difficult, if not impossible, to determine if someone has become a fan because she wants to hear from you and interact with you, or if it was just some passing whim. You may see your fan numbers go up, but that doesn't necessarily mean you've created lots of value.

TIP: Pay very close attention (and make a note of) the people who respond to the things you post up: the people who comment, retweet, or engage in discussions. Those people are the most valuable subset.

The bottom line with social media measurement: we're in some really early stages and there are plenty of bright lights to distract us. The biggest mistake of all, of course, is not to measure. With the effort you're putting into social media, it's like that famous bumper sticker: "If you're not concerned, you're not paying attention."

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 We'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Please be safe and drive carefully if you're traveling! We look forward to hearing from you in 2010! 

Tom

We're proud to announce the launch of the new website for Seasons at Prince Creek West! It's an active adult community located in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. The entire project was a complete re-branding project for us that included new collateral, outdoor, sales kits, sales video, print campaigns, social media, interactive marketing, and a new website. 

The website includes virtual tours, e-cards, homes for sale information, and lots of shareable content. This is also another Dockstreet Community and their first active adult lifestyle community. We are also rebranding another one down in St. Augustine, Florida at the World Golf Village. 

Check it out and let us know what you think!  

http://www.seasonsmi.com/

We're happy to announce the launch of the new Better Brands website! Better Brands is the largest beer distributer in Horry and Georgetown Counties and if you've ever had a beer down here, chances are it's one of theirs! 

The site is pretty cool and full of lots of fun stuff. We really wanted the site to be a place people would want to visit and explore time and time again. We've got classic beer commercials from the past 40 yrs, from Ed McMahon to Spuds McKenzie! Some really funny stuff. You can spend hours looking at them! 

One of my favorites is the vintage beer ads. We found lots of really beautiful ads from the past 40 yrs and they are really wonderful to look at and to see the marketing ideas. 

Another cool feature is the "Beer Handbook". Here you can browse 40 of their most popular brands and see nutritional information and taste pairings for each. 

It also has a picture gallery, promotion section, events calendar, swag gallery, screensaver/wallpaper section, just to name a few. And almost everything is also "shareable" with all the social networks. 

So go check it out and let me know what you think! 

www.budbeach.com

 Here's a very funny tv spot about tweeting and posting! For all you James Lipton fans, enjoy!

http://creativity-online.com/work/lg-locker-room/18062

Here's another great article I found about the need to do as much publishing as possible. I get the question a lot myself from friends and clients, "do I really need to do blogs, facebook, twitter, and emails? isn't just one good enough?". The answer is NO! and this article explains it nicely. 

First off, yes, I know this is a column about e-mail marketing. Bear with me -- the advice I give will be relevant to the topic.

This was a question posed to me after a panel discussion on interviewing that I participated in at my alma mater, Georgetown University. The questioner was an MBA student, as was the rest of the audience. Conventional wisdom appeared to be that all MBA students should be tweeting and blogging to help them land jobs -- much as conventional wisdom in the business world says you should be tweeting and blogging to land new customers.

Fair enough. Not to say that I'm smarter than the conventional wisdom, but my response wasn't the straightforward answer he wanted. It was a question: "What would you tweet or blog about?"

He seemed perplexed by this question. But tweeting, blogging, and e-mail newsletters (notice he didn't ask about doing one of those) are forms of publishing. And to be a good publisher, you must have a clearly defined and well-executed content strategy.

I used to listen to Jim Rome, the sports guy, on a regular basis. On his radio show, he used to tell callers to, "Have a take and don't s*ck." Strong words, but it's an apt way to describe a good content strategy. Know what your audience wants and provide it.

Prospective employers are busy -- just like prospective customers. What content can you provide that will (a) entice them to follow you on Twitter, (b) get them to sign up for an RSS feed of your blog, and/or (c) convince them that it's worthwhile to subscribe to your e-mail newsletter? Going a step further, can you continue to deliver on that content strategy promise to keep them reading past the first few weeks?

Content is king, no matter what the channel -- Twitter, a blog, or e-mail.

As an MBA student, ask yourself what you could tweet or blog about that would make prospective employers dedicated readers. As a marketing person, ask yourself what content you could provide current or prospective clients that engage them and build the relationship over time.

I developed my first e-mail newsletter in the mid-2000s. I was working for a publishing company, so we had paying customers that were thirsty for more information from us (the e-mail newsletter and companion Web site were free add-ons to a paid print publication). The print publication was delivered each morning; the e-mail newsletter each afternoon. In the e-mail, we provided updates on items featured earlier and initial information on stories that would be better fleshed out in the next day's morning edition.

We started with a strong content strategy; the Web site and e-mail were the perfect vehicles to implement it in a cost-effective manner.

It's all about the content. If the content isn't of interest to your target audience, it won't matter whether you use e-mail, Twitter, a blog, or print -- people won't engage and you won't be successful.

After thinking a bit, the MBA student responded to my query about what he would tweet or blog about. He said he would highlight articles he read on industry issues. This isn't a bad idea, but you have to ask yourself: Is this content the readers can get elsewhere? And if so, what type of value-add do you bring to the equation?

 There can be value in aggregating data -- but doing it right is a tall order. You have to read pretty much everything published having to do with the industry and then hone it down to the most relevant content. It takes time -- you may only use one out of every five or ten articles you review. To make it really relevant, you want to provide some original editorial around each item. Even better is to juxtapose two or more articles against each other to create a world view others may not have thought of doing. Can it be done? Yes. Is it time consuming and difficult to do it well? Yes.

Which brings us to not-so-good tweets, blogs, and e-mail newsletters. Just don't do it. There's nothing more discouraging than signing up to follow a brand on Twitter, visiting a brand's blog, or getting an e-mail newsletter -- and then finding out that it s*cks. It can negatively impact your brand -- and your sales.

 Until next time,

 Jeanne

ClickZ E-mail Marketing Workshop

Here's a really good article I ran across today on ClickZ on how search engines are getting intouch with social media. 

http://www.clickz.com/3635514

Social Media, Meet Search

 We knew it was going to happen eventually, but many digital marketers were taken somewhat by surprise when it happened all at once. Seemingly overnight, the era of social search dawned. Bing just started to incorporate tweets into search results, with Google right on its heels.

Then Google announced social search. Unlike most Google rollouts, it's available to everyone right off the bat (so if you're still pining for a Google Wave or Voice invitation, at least you've got something new from the company to keep you busy in the meantime).

Google Social Search really only kicks in if you've got a Google profile. Surely you have a Google profile by now? Well, time to seriously update it. By adding links to social networks and media you're involved with, e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, FriendFeed, Naymz...the list goes on and on -- Google can connect your search results with relevant information from your network.

What does that mean, exactly? Say you're visiting Seattle and get a hankering for sushi. Search on Google and if someone in your network is singing the praises of a local sushi place on their blog, in their tweets, or on their Facebook page, it's going to appear in your search results. But probably not mine, unless we share that friend in common.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing Meets SEO

Take it a step further. Shopping for a new digital camera? Considering doing business with a specific company? Search engines are becoming recommendation engines, and recommendations are coming from those people you trust the most: friends, family, and colleagues.

Currently, in addition to having a Google profile, you have to sign up to participate in Google's social search experiment (and Yahoo announced last week that it's incorporating the profiles into its search filters, too -- all the more reason to start test-driving). The eventuality, of course, is that social results will soon become part of the search engine results page (SERP). And there are going to be some major repercussions.

First and most obviously, these "social results" will make getting on the first page or two of organic search results much more competitive. You'll be competing not only with highly optimized competitors, but also with the searcher's entire social network. Yikes!

And paid search ads? Right now the jury's out. If the SERP is telling you an authoritative friend recommends Brand X, while the paid ads are touting Brand Y, which way are you going to go?

People overwhelmingly trust personal recommendations more than ads. It's beyond doubtful that social search will kill paid search advertising, of course, but it could eventually radically change the type of ads out there, particularly in popular consumer categories. One very likely outcome is that you can expect ads to be much more special-offer oriented, emphasizing price and value-adds to counter or compete with personal recommendations.

A New Kind of Link Love

Links have always been a critical element of SEO. Soon, who you're linked to socially could have more bearing than what sites are authoritatively linked to, insofar as search rankings are concerned.

As things stand now, you must opt into social search. Google has its infamous "don't be evil" motto to uphold, and getting results from your friends would be downright creepy if it happened just like that. And opting in requires some work. Not only do you have to set up a Google profile, you have to dig in and link all your social networks to it. For digital natives, that gets to be a rather formidable task. Of course, you can be discerning and pick and choose the information you're sharing with the search engines -- not at all a bad idea, particularly if your Flickr or MySpace accounts contain information or images of a somewhat compromising nature.

How will this all shake out for marketers? It's impossible to say at this point, but rest assured, there will be repercussions. Big ones.

That's why the time to start experimenting with social search is now. Sign up for social search, dust off your Google profile, and watch for possibilities.

 Here's a great article from Ad Age and Jim Kelly(not that Jim Kelly!) on how to make your brand an industry thought leader. Good stuff!

http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=140087

How to Define Your Brand as an Industry Thought Leader

Do So Effectively and Marketing Opportunities Will Follow

You can do your part to stimulate the economic recovery and help build your brand. Here's how.

First, recognize that buyers holding tightly to their purchase orders must not only be encouraged, but also inspired to do business with you. Moving from persuasion to inspiration requires an investment of time and, yes, dollars -- though not always a huge amount. Success is more likely to hinge on marketing savvy and a brand strategy executed with precision.

The idea is to create such a strong belief system around your brand that buyers will find a way to buy what you have to sell, no matter what.

Consumers (both business and personal) believe in brands they know something about. Often they believe in brands they know the most about. And for various reasons, they form a loyal cadre around that brand.

Your goal is to continually expose your marketplace to information about your brand and the broader context in which it exists, remembering that today's consumers are especially knowledge-hungry. That's where a thought-leadership strategy comes into play -- showcasing expert voices that define your brand.

The trick is to develop and maintain an ongoing flow of thought-leading communication from your brand evangelists that is both relevant and interesting.

Sharing knowledge and enthusiasm
Take retailer REI, for example. REI has a strong brand that speaks to the company's love affair with the outdoors. On its way to becoming a top clothing and sporting-goods provider, REI began to educate the public on outdoor activities and on the proper apparel and equipment to use when pursuing those activities. Whether or not a customer has purchased products from REI, he or she is welcome to learn all sorts of skills -- from kayaking to bicycle repair -- at seminars the company offers across the country. The company has also collected over 350 articles and videos on its official website, available under the tab, "Expert Advice." This willingness to share knowledge and enthusiasm for the natural world has built trust in the REI brand and continues to engender customer loyalty.

Can you go a step further with your brand by making it a valuable resource for your customers as they face different life-changing events? Many companies have done just that, and Gerber is one of them. For decades, the Gerber brand has been the trusted and primary choice of baby food for many parents. Today the brand has expanded beyond simply providing baby-size jars of premade baby food; its destination is to provide help and information to parents on the importance of nutrition and development of infants and toddlers. The Gerber website provides video, articles, product offers, tools and expert advice around five milestones of child development, from early pregnancy through preschool age, under their "Start Healthy, Stay Healthy" commitment.

Consulting and professional services organizations are excellent candidates for a thought-leadership strategy, and most of the big firms already have one. Those in the profession have long understood the power of thought leadership, both as a conversation starter and as a reliable source of knowledge valued by customers. Either way, the brand is strengthened.

McKinsey & Co. offers the gold-standard example of this technique. The company's McKinsey Quarterly is a full-blown business journal with in-depth content available to visitors who register. Subscribers have access to additional premium content. The company's thought-leadership strategy is a defining aspect of the McKinsey brand, with articles written by McKinsey consultants who base their points of view on the firm's collective experience. Business executives can access a wealth of information, and the high-quality reporting reinforces the McKinsey image as a trusted advisor.

The value of your company's insight
Once your thought-leadership machine is in full swing, the role of industry expert may even take on a life of its own. Journalists and industry watchers are likely to call on you for commentary and thus provide publicity free of charge. However, bear in mind that the media is discriminating when it comes to content. For a thought-leadership strategy to work, the points of view you produce must rise to the top. There is no salvation in adding another layer of mediocre or poorly executed communications to those already flooding the marketplace, and "brochureware" is almost always destined for the media trash bin.

But for thought leadership that has merit, the audience is growing. So, too, are the channels of distribution. Google Trends shows dramatic, often exponential, increases since early this decade of unique visits to online-research sites such as Wikipedia. Also growing are the numbers of access to source pages on topics from the latest NFL trade to the merits of alternative energy. Blogs spring up daily -- some of them extremely well-researched -- and their authors can quickly take on an industry expert role.

With intellectual capital driving many of the remaining bright spots in the economy, your company's insights, research and understanding of an issue or topic may provide the edge that could help further a career or make a difference in someone's life. In return, your fans will remember where the information came from, come back for more, and tell others about you. By taking the trouble to create and share pertinent information, you fuel the belief system that sustains your brand.

Done correctly, a thought-leadership strategy will help your brand become the go-to source for audiences needing unbiased advice and critical thinking on issues they find important. And when that happens, your reputation will soar -- with marketing opportunities not far behind.

Here's a great little article from Bart Cleveland in Ad Age talking about cutting corners in this tough economy! Enjoy!

Tinkering With Quality Can Jeopardize Success.
Don't Cut Corners on Creativity Just to Trim Costs

A brutal economy wreaks havoc on more than ad budgets. The work suffers. It suffers not as much from budget reductions as from fear. Clients are desperate, frightened and risk-averse. They feel more pressure than ever to justify every expense with tangible, measurable results at less cost. This pressure creates a great temptation for both agency and client to tinker, to see if a little more horsepower can be squeezed from the work. This is a noble cause, but it is fraught with danger.

A few examples of tinkering: What if the ad visually "screamed" a little louder? We want people to know that things are on sale! Could the ad have more information, to more fully explain all the reasons why the customer should buy the product? Can the tone of the advertising be more matter-of-fact and less entertaining? We need to assure the customer that our brand represents concern for the difficulties of the current economy, don't we?

These are legitimate questions. Unfortunately, they are also a surefire way to erode the brand. After years of investing in a brand's power all this work can be quickly undone by abandoning and even contradicting its message. Quick sales might result, but the price can well be the devaluation and commoditization of the advertiser's product. There are too many case studies that show a brand that discounts lowers its true value in the consumer's mind.

Not surprisingly, advertisers are using the current economy to renegotiate contracts with their ad agencies. The result of paying less for branding will also erode a brand. Less money spent means less time spent. Less time results in a lack of originality. Perhaps there is a misunderstanding by advertisers of the actual cost for what we do. This could explain their belief that we can do the same quality for less money. If this is true, it is still our responsibility to make the truth be known.

As stated earlier, the less a customer values a product, the more likely they are to switch simply based on price. It is no different in our industry. If your agency has to cut prices in bad times, you can be assured they will not return to norm when times are good. The exception is when a client has a clear understanding of what they are giving up for the sake of cutting costs.

Do not give into fear. Do not put quality aside until a more economically friendly time. Bad times offer many opportunities to market your agency's talent. Effectively taking advantage of those opportunities in the bad times relies upon one thing: courage.