This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from April 2010. We welcome your feedback.
By Francis Moran
I can’t remember when or from whom I first heard the line, “Marketers should think like the fish, not like the fisher.” But I have always enjoyed it as a pithy summary of our marketing credo that says you must put yourself in your customers’ shoes when plotting your marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter how fancy your new spinning rod might be, or how pretty the fly is that you just put on the end of your fly rod, if the fish aren’t hungry for what you’re offering, they’re not going to bite. You need to know what the fish are looking for and then craft your marketing message accordingly.
Driving along the other day, I saw the truck in this picture and I drove around a couple of city blocks so I could come back and take the picture. I tweeted this the other day but I thought I’d also share it here because it is such a simple-yet-brilliant example of this precept. Enjoy.
By Alexandra Reid
I talk a lot about social media marketing strategy here, but rarely do I mention the time-and-money-saving tools that streamline my community building activities and make our social media marketing program an effective solution for businesses.
All of the tools I use are free and available to anyone with access to a computer. They are great for small and new businesses with tight budgets and limited time for experimentation and operation. But while I highly recommend that these tools be used to support social media marketing activities, they are useless for businesses that don’t align them with a sound social media marketing strategy. Additionally, while these tools help abridge the flow of social media content so users can siphon relevant information, engage with their communities and track progress, a key challenge cited by numerous businesses is keeping on top of monitoring, measurement and engagement efforts.
We must also remember that these tools are free and far from perfect. In fact, the biggest criticisms of all social media monitoring tools (free and paid) are that they sometimes fail to provide reliable and accurate data, have lag times, bugs, and are confusing to use. That’s why we must always cross-examine data with information provided by other tools and sometimes even check information manually to ensure everything is accurate.
Today I’ll discuss the tools I use for monitoring social media. In a subsequent post, I’ll reveal my favourite management and measurement tools. You’ll notice that I don’t use many tools to do my job. This is because too many tools act as speed bumps in an otherwise efficient engagement system.
Without further ado, here are my favourite social media monitoring tools:
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As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, David French, a senior Canadian patent attorney with 35 years of experience, now provides a further of his commentaries on the importance to a company of protecting its Intellectual Property.
By David French
In previous posts in this series we addressed mainly issues relating to patents. In this post we take a break from patents to discuss another very important type of Intellectual Property.
Intellectual Property has acquired this name because it is a type of property that is created by government-passed laws. Without legislation, the fundamental rule of the marketplace is that everyone is entitled to copy. But when someone copies trademark, there is an almost universal recognition that this is unjust. Besides being unjust, there are powerful economic justifications for suppressing the copying of trademarks by competitors.
Everyone has an impression as to what a “trademark” is. They think of Coca-Cola, or Heinz, or Heinz 57, or Kentucky Fried Chicken. The common thread of all trademarks is that when you see a mark you have a certain expectation about what you’re going to get. Although there are no rules forcing a trademark owner to market a consistent product under a trademark, there are powerful economic incentives for doing so.
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By Linda Forrest
Many of us are heading into a long weekend, something which makes the Friday clock tick just a little bit more s l o w l y. To help alleviate the painful drip of time before your extended weekend, here, for your pleasure, I’ve compiled a handful of Internet memes about PR, social media, and marketing.
For those of you wondering about what Internet memes are, Wikipedia offers this description:
The term Internet meme (
/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet.[2] The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.
If you’re looking for examples, Wikipedia also has that covered. KnowYourMeme is working on documenting all of these Internet phenomena.
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By Alexandra Reid
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past few months, Pinterest is a new, visually stunning social bookmarking site that is breaking records for new visitors. It received nearly 11 million visits the week ending Dec. 17, 2011, outranking Google+, and experienced a fourfold increase in unique visitors from September to December. I’ve written on Pinterest here before, but I thought it might be helpful to also share with you the recording of a Focus roundtable I participated in yesterday on the rise of Pinterest in B2B.
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Burning the candle at both ends as the clock ticks down
February 15, 2012 by Francis Moran
As we have discussed before, Katie and Luke Hrycak, the sibling founders of CommentAir, are bootstrapping their venture around their day jobs, an approach that calls for certain sacrifices. Business meetings after 9 p.m., letting the wardrobe grow threadbare and valuing every dollar of friends and family financing is par for the course […]
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The #1 rule for blog content SEO: Write for your readers
February 14, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
Blogs are widely known for their SEO-driving potential because they are comprised of content, which is what search engines use to locate and index results. With Google’s Panda update, quality content has taken centre stage, and businesses that post quality content […]
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Best of: BPM, POS, CMS… Acronyms causing confusion
February 13, 2012 by Linda Forrest
Working in the technology realm as we do, it is inevitable that we encounter many, many acronyms in our daily work. A quick scan of the blogosphere reveals that it’s a hot topic amongst technology marketers like Chris Hoskin and analysts alike […]
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Five tips for writing contributed articles that get published and read
February 10, 2012 by Linda Forrest
There’s an art to successfully pitching and writing effective contributed articles as part of a content marketing strategy for your business-to-business technology company.[…]
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Content marketing: Old wine in a new vessel
February 09, 2012 by Francis Moran
Everywhere I turn these days, it seems that content marketing is being touted as the latest must-do for business-to-business technology marketers. And there seems to be considerable angst over how to do it properly […]
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Giving your team ownership
February 08, 2012 by Francis Moran
But working toward a deadline and ensuring that all of the pieces fall into place is about much more than technical and logistical details. Perhaps the most important variable to manage is the human factor […]
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The vital role of social media in a changing B2B revenue cycle
February 07, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
With the rise of social media, today’s B2B sales landscape is more complex than ever before. There are hundreds of social media channels. Within them, a vast number of conversations are taking place […]
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More tribal leaders required
February 06, 2012 by Bob Bailly
Has evolution prepared humans to live in the world we have created? Was Desmond Morris correct when he pointed out that, “Man’s biological equipment is not strong enough to cope with the unbiological environment it has created?” […]
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Traditional Marketing is Dead – Long Live Bikini Waxer Marketing | Scalexl : [...] pointed out by Alexandra Reid on the Francis Moran website content marketing is becoming more and more like journalism. So, it is not just about the content, [...]
It’s Summertime…and the Networking is Easy? | THE MERRAINE BRAIN : [...] In fact, summer is perhaps one of the times least used to network, yet at the same time has shown to be the most productive time to network. People tend to be in a brighter mood compared to during the gloomy winters-especially where I am from in England! Networking needs to be fun and not approached as another chore, like mowing the lawn. (http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/social-media-strategy-why-meeting-in-the-real-world-matt...) [...]