Don’t just dream big

Don’t just dream big, accomplish big.

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Mobile Marketing

I am trying to learn as much as I can about mobile marketing, anybody have any good resources?

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Is your marketing real or fake?

People are extremely perceptive.

People know when someone is being fake and putting on a show.

People are always aware of scams, so don’t give them one.

Be genuine in your actions and be real in your interactions.

SEO and Social Media Book Reviews by Compendium

After the last post, I wanted to share with you a blog post that I came across by Frank Dale at Compendium.

He goes through 6 of the top books, in his opinion, about SEO and Social Media. I am personally reading through Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox right now and am excited to see if I agree with his position of the book.

Have any of you read any of the books he mentions? What did you think? Are there any other books that need to be on the chart?

Frank Dale’s Blog Post Link.

Related Articles

• Social Media for Customer Acquisition (slideshare.net)
• You Can’t Separate Social Media and SEO (conversationmarketing.com)

Searching to understand your target.

Image via CrunchBase

I have been reading the book Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox. It is focused on SEO and how to use an online marketing strategy to grow your company. I am only a few chapters in, but am finding some really useful information, especially on how to use search engines as a tool to gain some great information about your potential customers.

I recommend reading her book for a more in depth discussion on using Google Insights to see what people are searching for. This is such a great tool because it tells you what your potential customers are looking for.

I have pulled a chart from when I searched the key words for “Computer” and “PC.” These can both be very useful to a company that works in selling computers to the public. Here is the chart for the Interest over time in “computers” and “PC”. (If you are unable to view the chart, then view the post here)

One of the greatest takeaways to look is how PC trend, which is in red, shows a seasonality peak right before the end of the year, so around Christmas time. This shows that people are searching for “PC” in preparation for Christmas. It is important because it allows the company to understand when it needs to put out promotional pieces and work on marketing to anticipate and create an increase in sales because people are looking for PCs during this time of year.

Another chart that is useful is the rising searches chart. I sadly don’t have the ability embed the chart to show it, but since 2004 “mac computers” has been on the rise of 130% of searches done. Of course this is a crucial piece of information whether you sell Windows based computers or Macintosh. As a Windows based seller, you need to understand that Mac computers are getting very popular and that they are truly a force to be reckoned with. As a Macintosh seller it is important to capitalize upon the growth and increase in the amount of searches and use it to your advantage to reach potential customers by having a good search engine rating and converting them into customers.

I realize that that was a very elementary look at it, and I’m sure that many of you can come in and look at those charts and infer much more information out of it, but I wanted to just write a brief look into Google Insights as I am just now beginning to work with it. Let me know what you think about it and what experience you have had with Google Insights.

Related Articles

• Google Insights for Search (tengoldenrulesblog.blogspot.com)
• Understanding Google’s Keyword Research and Search Trend Tools (firstrate.co.nz)

Keep Reading

You always hear people talking about how reading is so important and how the greatest leaders are people who read. I wondered if that was true. The more I think about it and experience the effect that reading has on me, the more I think that the best workers and leaders do read and A LOT!

The other day I was in a meeting talking about marketing. The people I was meeting with were asking me questions about marketing, and honestly I was afraid that I wasn’t going to sound intelligent or not be able to answer their questions.

As the meeting went on, I realized that I was answering all the questions and had opinions about what they were asking and was quite happily surprised that I actually knew what I was talking about. The more I thought about why, the more I realized it was because I have been reading a lot of books and blogs about marketing.

Reading sticks with you even if you don’t realize it. It seems to me that the more I read the more I learn and am able to bring it up when needed and when the situation calls for me to bring the information out, even when I don’t think I’m retaining the information that I am reading.

My advice is to keep reading if you are a reader, and if you aren’t find what you are passionate about and begin reading. You will learn more than you realize.

Twitter vs. Facebook

Facebook and Twitter are both great tools for marketing, but I prefer Twitter for one big reason.

Interaction.

From personal experience and reading research from Exact Target, I have found that Twitter is the place to interact with you followers of your brand. It boils down simply to: People only watch on Facebook, but they interact on Twitter.

Do you need a Facebook page for your business then? Yes. That is most likely going to be one of your largest audience but understand that people mainly watch on Facebook, and don’t interact as much.

I prefer Twitter because you can actually interact and build relationships with the people your brand comes in contact with. You build the emotional connection that is so important to growing your brand.

Related Articles

• Is Twitter for Business Even Worth the Trouble? (convinceandconvert.com)

Why I am becoming a fan of Google Voice.

Google Voice… so far.

Well after trying multiple times to get Google Voice working, I finally got it. It still is not perfect, but for right now I am happy with the way it is set up. I have it set up so that if I do not answer, the call will be forwarded to my Google Voicemail.

Google Voicemail was the whole reason that I was interested in Google Voice. I am not a huge fan of voicemail for business, as shown by my last post. I am a fan of email though and Google did something incredible by merging them together!

I love the whole concept that if I miss a call, it will be forwarded to a voicemail that will transcribe the message and send it to me in an email and also have on my online account. The transcription isn’t perfect, but its good. I don’t need it to be perfect. I want it to be able to understand the main point of each message that comes in so that I know whether it is urgent or if it can wait until I am able to sit down for a few minutes to return calls.

Overall, I think Google Voice is a great tool that will really help with my dislike towards voicemail and to be able to respond to people’s needs and requests a lot easier and more efficiently.

10 reasons why I hate voicemail, but prefer email.

Let me make a disclaimer, I hate voicemail for business purposes. I have no problem with voicemail coming from a friend or family member.

So here we go!

1. I don’t have to take notes with email.

2. I can’t receive files in a voicemails.

3. I can’t send files in return to a voicemail.

4. I can screen my emails.

5. I can return emails during a time when I am unable to talk on the phone.

6. I can categorize and file away emails.

7. I don’t have to try to interpret and listen to an email over and over again to understand what they are saying.

8. I immediately know who emails are from. (I sadly don’t have visual voicemail)

9. I can respond with a one word email instead of making an entire 5-10 minute phone call if one word is all it takes.

10. I just find voicemail downright annoying.

Well those are my top 10 reasons. Do you have any others?

Again, if we are friends or close acquaintances, I really don’t have a problem with voicemails. Its when used in business settings that I would rather do away with it completely.

Business is Marketing.

I’m going to be starting a series of blog posts on why marketing is so important. I know that my title sounds like marketing is the most important department of business and the only one that really matters. That’s not necessarily what I mean with that. Business is a composition of multiple different departments put together to make a whole.

It is like an orchestra. An orchestra is made up of multiple different groups of instruments. They are all different. The violins play a different part from the trumpets and so forth. The problem is that without all of the parts put together, its not an orchestra. You need all the parts to make it a whole.

While, I believe marketing is one of the most important parts of business, it cannot exist on its own. Business is not just marketing. There is finance, human resources, research and development, etc. Business needs all the these components to work together for it to succeed.

What I want to share with you though is why marketing should be at the core of a business, and not just a department, but something that every department gets in on and has a part in.

Marketing isn’t just advertising, social media, tv commercials. It is changing rapidly to be more all inclusive. Everyone is a marketer in their company and needs to understand what they can do to help their company succeed.

I touched on this concept a little bit in a previous blog from a different angle. :: Marketing is for everyone. I want to focus on why everyone in a business is a marketer for that business in this series of posts.

I hope that you enjoy this, and please comment and let me know any thoughts, ideas, or critiques that you have!