7 Comments Posted in Marketing April 11, 2009

The Value of Ink and How It Grows My Business

We are in a tough economy. Now more than ever YOU need to stand out from the rest. 

Remember those sleepless nights trying to figure out how to better market your company? Your competition was awake with you… thinking the same things.

I wanted to give a quick idea for making a impact with current and potential clients: notecards. Every time you meet with someone. Every time you get a referral or a new client. 

Sit down and write a note to that person. Tell them it was nice to meet them. Tell them that you are excited to meet again. You will be amazed how far a handwritten note can go in this day and age.

In the Internet age.. Ink still has a place.

and in my opinion.… Read more

11 Comments Posted in business, Micro-Blogging, Social Strategy, twitter April 11, 2009

I Don’t Care If You Are On Facebook and Twitter

There are hundreds of thousands of ways you can use social media.

Facebook… Twitter… Vimeo… YouTube… LinkedIN… SmallerIndiana… Plaxo…
They go on and on and on and on and on.
The tools are becoming universal. They are becoming secondary. The learning curve is dissapearing. 

Frankly… it isn’t unique anymore to just be on Facebook and Twitter. The world is hitting social media with a force and with that force comes millions of people using the same tool. How do you set yourself apart? How do you make a difference using the same site (Facebook) that upwards of 250 million people are using?

Put your heart into the content. Create an extreme value that PEOPLE and the masses cannot ignore. Only then will you cut through the noise. 

Gary Vaynerchuk has … Read more

15 Comments Posted in Corporate Strategy, innovation, Micro-Blogging, millennial, Reputation Management, small business, social media, Social Media Community, Social Strategy April 10, 2009

Forget Social Media Measurement. Get Back to the Basics.

There has been a lot of talk about measurement and return-on-investment in the world of social media. Where and what do we measure? Is there any type of return on investment we can micro manage down to the point of dollars and cents?

Richard Stacy asked a brilliant question on his Social Computing Journal post called Social Media Measurement – Are We STaring At Stones? Are we measuring/looking at the wrong thing? Are we missing the point when we use Web 1.0 measurement tools and try to squeeze them into a Web 2.0 – 3.0 world? I think so. I would guess that Richard would agree.

Are we staring at the finish line without starting the race?

We are focused so intently on understanding the measurement model of social media … Read more

11 Comments Posted in indianapolis, innovation, Marketing April 9, 2009

What’s Behind ILearningGlobal.tv? Coal or Gold?

There has been a slow but steady push (at least here in Indianapolis) to join a website with the likes of T. Harv Ecker, Brian Tracy, and Dr. Tony Allesandra. It is called iLearningGlobal. The whole concept behind the site:

“As an iLearningGlobal member you have direct 24/7 access to the most valuable training and learning content available today. iLearningGlobal provides training videos, audio programs, and ebooks from the top speakers, trainers, and authors worldwide. Fresh new content is added to the site weekly so the information is always fresh and you never run out of resources for continuous learning.

iLearningGlobal offers you the most advanced user viewing experience today within the iLG Signature Video Theater where you can experience full screen, High Definition video free of loading and

… Read more

10 Comments Posted in ROI, small business, social media, Social Media Community, Venture Capital April 9, 2009

Put My Money on Myspace not Facebook

Ahh… welcome back to the Myspace and Facebook debate. I love talking about the business models of social networks across the Internet.

I was reading a post from Edmund Lee at theBigMoney called Why Facebook Can’t Succeed (via alisa at socialized) and I found myself agreeing with Edmund on some of the community versus business aspects of his post. I have always been under the assumption that we were approaching another net explosion (circa 1999) because of the value of companies being placed on growth instead of revenue. It seems ridiculous to me and completely backward.

It is easy for the social media nerds of the world to bash the social networks (Myspace) that tend to be a little more “whoring” of their advertising. The truth of … Read more