Marketing Archives - Page 16 of 16

21Mar 2012 by Bob Cargill

Confessions of an Aspiring Social Media Superhero, Part One

Blogging, Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

Rare is the day that I'm not approached by friends, colleagues or even complete strangers with questions about social media. Joe Kyle was the latter. Introduced to me last September by a mutual friend, Joe was between jobs and determined to learn everything he could about Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the like. I was more than happy to oblige his request to pick my brain. I enjoy meeting new people and being asked to provide assistance. I'm always glad to help. Over lunch at Panera Bread in Waltham, MA, Joe and I hit it off from the get-go, going on and on about his career goals, the business world and our shared passion for the latest online communications and marketing tools, technologies and tactics. Among other things, what impressed me…

20Jul 2010 by Bob Cargill

10 Ways to Succeed as a Copywriter, Part Two

Advertising, Branding, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Fundraising, Marketing

2. Care deeply about results. While being able to exhibit a high degree of creativity may be important to the success of a copywriter, achieving the highest possible ROI is usually imperative, certainly in direct marketing, the industry in which I earn my livelihood. My brethren and I work with the understanding that the purpose of most campaigns is to promote sales of a product or service, not the copywriter’s ability to turn a clever phrase. It’s nice to win awards. But what really counts is winning over your audience, those who are hopefully hanging on your every single word. Yes, what the most successful copywriters really care about is convincing those on the receiving end of their communications to take action in some way, shape or form such as picking up the phone, filling out a form, clicking on…

13Jul 2010 by Bob Cargill

10 Ways to Succeed as a Copywriter, Part One

Advertising, Branding, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Fundraising, Marketing

My first job out of graduate school many years ago was as a copywriter for RCA Direct Marketing in New York City. And the rest, as they say, has been history. Since that first exciting stint writing about the most popular records (yes, vinyl) and tapes (yes, cassettes and eight-tracks) of the day, I’ve written about an incalculable number of different products and services. As I wrote in the preceding post here on A New Marketing Commentator… I’ve written copy to help promote everything from business cards to books, healthcare to software, insurance coverage to investment advice, magazines to music, travel to tuxedos and much, much more. I’ve also written direct response fundraising copy for dozens of charitable organizations (which, by the way, has been some of the most satisfying work…

28Jun 2010 by Bob Cargill

The Best of What I’ve Posted Here in the Last Year

Blogging, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

On July 2, 2009, I published a list -- a "retrospective," if you will -- of some of the posts I had written about social media in the last year. And now I'd like to share with you a similar list of the best (in my humble opinion) of what I've posted here on this blog, A New Marketing Commentator, in the last 12 months. Over the course of the last year, I've tried to post something new once a week. But, for a variety of reasons, that's not always been possible. Yes, I've been helping clients with their own social media programs. And, as Cargill Creative, I've been hanging out on Twitter and Facebook, too. Finally, I've been keeping very busy as a copywriter, creative director and public speaker. Of course, it should go without saying that I also spend as…

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…