Marketing Archives - Page 29 of 34

18Aug 2009 by Bob Cargill

Who Moved My Customers?

Advertising, Blogging, Branding, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media

To say that marketing has changed in the last few years would be to put it quite mildly. Marketing has been rocked, shaken, stirred, knocked for a loop and turned completely upside down not just by the Internet, but by the emergence of social media as an informational, educational and conversational platform leveraged by the masses. The authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto had it right when they said, among other things, that… “There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.” The cold, hard facts say that customers are simply not where they were as recently as the turn of this century...they're not waiting for the mail, reading the newspaper,…

10Aug 2009 by Bob Cargill

Social Media is a Team Sport, Not a Solo Act

Advertising, Blogging, Branding, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media

As someone who spends the better part of his days – and nights, too – either reading about, talking about or working with social media, I can speak from experience when I say that as much fun as it is to spend so much time on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other such online communications platforms, to make that time pay off is no easy task. It’s true. Given the cacophony of content that’s being disseminated across the social web these days, anyone on the front line of their brand’s social media efforts knows they have their work cut out for them if they expect to command attention, engage constituents and win friends, fans and followers. Not only does a social media practitioner need to be on call practically…

03Aug 2009 by Bob Cargill

Lance Armstrong, My Wife, the Yellow Wristband and Twitter

Branding, Cause-Related Marketing, Fundraising, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media

Having won the Tour de France a record-breaking seven consecutive times (1999-2005), Lance Edward Armstrong went a long way – literally – toward winning the world over for his athletic prowess once again when he finished third this year in the prestigious, 2,200-mile, 23-day bicycle race. But Lance is not just one of the greatest athletes of all time. He is also a tireless, tenacious advocate for cancer sufferers and their families, having beaten the dread disease himself and founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF), a nonprofit organization that goes above and beyond in helping the millions of people living with cancer today. Chances are you know of the Lance Armstrong Foundation because of its ubiquitous yellow LIVESTRONG wristbands, which were sold for the first time over five years ago to…

28Jul 2009 by Bob Cargill

The Importance of Getting Past the Social Media “Dip”

Blogging, Branding, Marketing, Social Media

If there’s one thing I enjoy almost as much as using social media in my day-to-day communications and marketing activities, it’s speaking about these relatively new online publishing tools to friends, colleagues and, frankly, anyone else who will listen to me. I’ve always liked sharing what I know with others, teaching, training, helping others get from point A to point B – regardless of the subject. But there’s something different about social media. There’s something radically transformational about it that you just wouldn’t understand – and be able to take advantage of – till you’ve actually used it yourself for a while. If you ask me, the key to being successful with social media is patience, perseverance and pushing past the so-called “Dip,” a difficult stretch of time (invariably…

21Jul 2009 by Bob Cargill

How to Make People Like You on Twitter

Branding, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media

If you’re one of the millions of people using Twitter to share what’s on your mind, you know what a challenge it is to stand out among the crowd. To some, Twitter’s a cocktail party. To others, it’s a soap box. But to the majority of its users, Twitter’s more like an uncontrollable scrum in which everybody is competing for a greater share of the discussion. But it doesn’t have to be that way, not if you do as much listening as talking on this social media communications platform – and, when you do put yourself out there in 140 characters or less, you pause before you post. That’s right, like a good conversationalist, the last thing you want to do is come across as loud…

14Jul 2009 by Bob Cargill

Sleepless in Social Media

Blogging, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

At a conference on social media I attended earlier this year, one of the speakers asked the audience how many of us really had the time for social media. Proudly, albeit surprisingly, a large percentage of us raised our hands, thinking...of course, we had the time for social media. Blogs. Twitter. Facebook. A few minutes here, a few minutes there. Piece of cake. But the speaker had actually thrown us a curve ball, going on to make his point that none of us really had the time it took to engage in social media. We made the time. Like our colleagues and peers, we couldn’t help but be busy with quotidian demands on our work lives, too – commutes, meetings, phone calls and the like. Never mind our family time.…

08Jul 2009 by Bob Cargill

Meet Me at the Intersection of Social Media and Marketing

Blogging, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

While I’ve always believed in the principles and power of direct marketing, as soon as I started blogging in early 2004, I realized I had discovered something that could very well have a huge impact on the future of the industry in which I earned my livelihood. I'm no prognosticator, but I saw for myself what the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto had written in their groundbreaking book, that, among other things, "markets are conversations" and that “there are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone” and that "companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best…

02Jul 2009 by Bob Cargill

Retrospective: What I’ve Written about Social Media in the Last Year

Blogging, Branding, Cause-Related Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

While I haven’t posted much here on A New Marketing Commentator lately, I have been active in the blogosphere via Internet Marketing Strategies and Secrets, a blog that is published and written by the team at Nowspeed. I’ve written a number of long posts there, most about social media, something I’ve been preaching and practicing and incorporating into my everyday marketing activities – where and when appropriate, of course – like there’s no tomorrow. So as a way of kickstarting this long overdue re-launch of the blog that I reluctantly put on hiatus for so long, I thought I would share some of those posts with you here. If you have the time, reading through this retrospective of mine will give you an idea of what I’ve been up to lately and will, hopefully, help you start, or improve…

25May 2009 by Bob Cargill

My Blog and My Career, Then and Now

Advertising, Blogging, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Fundraising, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media

This blog, A New Marketing Commentator, was a labor of love of mine from February 17, 2004 to May 10, 2006. Since I signed off here more than three years ago, I have continued to write articles, essays, commentaries and blog posts on direct marketing, advertising, PR and social media, most recently as Creative Director at Nowspeed on our blog, Internet Marketing Strategies and Secrets. I have also staked out my turf on both Twitter and Facebook, where I invite you to follow and friend me. So please...what you see here is by no means a complete and accurate reflection of what I'm up to nowadays. Everything from the sidebar to the masthead of this blog needs an update and a full makeover. I continue to keep A New Marketing Commentator public only as a way of illustrating my history in…