By Alexandra Reid
Rebranding using social media is a new and fascinating subject. Part of my job is to keep on top of the latest social media best practices, but after an extensive amount of research, I’ve found that there is very little comprehensive and applicable content offered on the subject of social media rebranding.
To help our clients and others currently going through this process, I’ve decided to share all of the information I have gathered on the subject, which includes how to change a company’s name, image and “voice” across accounts and how to spread the word of the change using the “big three,” Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This is part one of a three-part series and will cover company name changes. Over the next two weeks, I will explain how to reflect and support your rebranding by changing your image and voice through social media.
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By Linda Forrest
There’s an old adage about the cobbler’s kids having no shoes, which means the shoemaker is too busy making shoes for his customers to ensure that his own children have shoes on their feet.
There’s an unfortunate parallel in marketing: marketers are often spending so much of their time marketing to prospective buyers that they fall down promoting the virtues of marketing to their higher ups, who make the ultimate decision about whether to sign off on the proposed marketing budget.
In an agency environment, the failure to articulate the value of marketing and why it’s an investment rather than a cost centre, can spell death for the business altogether. When internal marketing resources fail to sell their marketing proposals to the C-suite, the repercussions are felt far beyond the marketing department as campaigns not fully executed result in fewer leads entering the pipeline and fewer sales down the road.
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Associate Peter Hanschke is an Ottawa-based product management specialist. His post is part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market. We welcome your comments.
By Peter Hanschke
I’ve seen this situation far too often.
The engineering team and product management decide on what the next revision of the product needs to be or, in a new product introduction case, what the new product will be. The development team goes through its process to define how to build the features or product and starts a large development cycle.
There is always a great deal of interaction between engineering and product management, but, sadly, marketing is left out. I’m not sure why; maybe they feel that marketing won’t “get it.” Instead, the development process winds through the last test phase without any input from the marketing team. When all the critical bugs are fixed the product is released. It is at this point that marketing gets the product information thrown over the wall with the unrealistic expectation that it will create an immediate miracle. And then everyone wonders why the press release, the collateral, the web site, and so forth are so late in coming.
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By Alexandra Reid
Google Plus is all the rave, but will it eventually experience the same outcome as Wave? Bloggers and social media enthusiasts are clearly excited about the new platform, dissecting, praising and criticizing its features and debating whether it will ever seek to compete with Facebook or if it will flounder like Google’s other attempts to penetrate the social media marketplace.
It is estimated that Google Plus will grow to 20 million users by the end of the weekend and that the current user base has already surpassed the 10 million mark. It has also grown at an astonishing rate, with a 350-percent increase in users in just six days.
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This is the next contribution to this blog by Associate Andrew Penny, an Ottawa-based business development and market strategist for B2B companies, and president of Kingsford Consulting Ltd. Andrew’s post is part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market. We welcome your comments.
By Andrew Penny
Global warming, Greek debt crisis, Chinese labour issues, U.S. unemployment, Royal visits… life is tough and running a business with all this change and uncertainty is even tougher … or is it? I say when life gives you lemons, open a lemonade stand!
I regularly ask our clients from a wide variety of sectors how their businesses are going. With few exceptions, it appears to be business as usual. (One of our strategic marketing plan clients, selling software to the retail industry, is having one of their strongest months ever. Another has received an unsolicited acquisition offer – a good one!) Look around you, people are still putting gas in their cars (despite the cost), they are buying groceries, going to school, buying houses, making holiday plans, building bridges, sewers and railways and so on – all things that keep the economy working.
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