Marketing, Social Media & Technology
Suze Bragg and Sima Dahl join forces to deliver timely insights on the best marketing, social media and technology solutions for your business. Whether you're a newly minted entrepreneur or an industry veteran, you'll find tips and practical advice you can leverage in your business today. Recent Posts
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Posted by Sima Dahl on February 5, 2010
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should, and that same holds true with Social Media Marketing. On the one hand, social media marketing requires very few resources to try out. For the price of a Flip video recorder you can post something clever to YouTube and watch it go viral. On the other hand, tinkering with social media can hijack resources and focus from your more proven marketing tactics such as direct mail or field marketing. Before you get caught up in the social media frenzy, take a minute to get reacquainted with your customer:
Industries: Sales and Marketing 
Posted by Suze Bragg on January 29, 2010
On Saturday, January 23rd, I heard a fantastic speaker named Tara Anderson* give advice about participating in social media. Since many small companies are just starting out, I thought this would be applicable. Her presentation. titled "Everything I learned about social media I learned from 80s sitcom" is hilarious. Besides, it just makes sense: 1. Fake it until you make it. Many people don't know what they're doing at first, and most are newbies in technology, so just jump in and learn whatever tool you're using. It'll all start to make sense after that. 2. Embrace technology and bring it into your world, but remember it's not your life. Twitter is fun; Facebo...Read More
Posted by Sima Dahl on January 28, 2010
Last week comScore released their December 2009 U.S. Media Metrix data. comScore is arguably the global leader in measuring the digital world and the preferred source of digital marketing intelligence, and this report provides marketers and business owners important insights into how best to allocated limited marketing resources. The stand-out story of the last year continues to be Facebook. According to comScore, "In the past year alone, Facebook more than doubled its U.S. audience from 54.5 million visitors in December 2008 to 111.9 million visitors in December 2009. It went from being the #11 ranked property to the #4 ranked property. It now accounts for 7 percent of all time spent online in the U.S." ...Read More Industries: Sales and Marketing
Posted by Suze Bragg on January 26, 2010
My friend Jay started a blog after building his website because he thought it would help him get more business. He sporadically wrote blogs about specials in his stores and sent out discount coupons to customers. Yet, nobody ever commented on his blog, and worse, when he looked at his Google Analytics he had almost zero repeat visitors. He thought this social media stuff wasn't worth the time or effort and wrote it off. Good news is today I discovered that theBlogFrog.com is a great solution to his online customer woes. The concept of BlogFrog is quite brilliant. Whenever a BlogFrog member visits another BlogFrog blog or community, their profile picture and blog address show up for all visitors to see. So the more BlogFrog sites and communities a member visits (people have more than one interest to r...Read More
Posted by Suze Bragg on January 25, 2010
With the Internet, almost everything is transparent: how you conduct your business; how friendly you are to your employees; how fiscally responsible you are; and how many parking tickets you've received in the last six years. At any given moment, almost everybody can find out where you live and then view the house at street level thanks to Google Maps. Yet, knowing that this is the state of our lives now, many companies and people still think we operate circa 1990. How can that be?One of the many definitions of transparent is easily seen through, recognized, or detected. Think about that. Easily detected. This past weekend I was reading through a proposed business plan for a start-up company. In my research -- using a company they i...Read More Industries: Technology
Posted by Sima Dahl on January 24, 2010
Last March I wrote about how to convert graphic file formats with one of my favorite online image converters called CoolUtils. It worked seamlessly to convert .gif and .bmp files to .jpb which is the only file format I'm permitted to use on this blog. Until today. When I tried to convert an image this morning, I was directed to download an .exe file which my Mac promptly rejected. That's when I discovered Zamzar.com.  With a few simple clicks, I was able upload a .gif file for conversion. A few short seconds later I received an email directing me back to...Read More
Industries: Sales and Marketing
Posted by Sima Dahl on January 22, 2010
Today we're talking with Tim Jahn, the founder and creative force behind Beyond The Pedway, a weekly online video series that explores Chicago-based entrepreneurial companies. Tim's extensive background in multimedia and video production coupled with his knack for storytelling enable him to help small businesses leverage the power of video to tell their story and succeed in the world of new media.  Q1. Tim, thanks for sharing your knowledge of business video with us. To help set the stage, why do you encourage small businesses to consider video as part of their marketing mix?We all have a unique story to tell an...Read More Industries: Sales and Marketing
Posted by Suze Bragg on January 18, 2010
Women using social media is one thing; putting a bunch of tech savvy women in a room together discussing how to use social media is another. The latter is taking social media's collaboration to a whole new level, and last January 2009, entrepreneur Denise Smith decided to do something about it: She founded Chicks Who Click. Denise took two loves and married them: event planning and strategic marketing. As an independent event planner for Metzger Associates, a public relations firm in Boulder, Colorado, she created a conference for women that empowers women. By keeping each conference under 100 attendees, and placing 8 to 10 people around each table, networking and collaboration abound. After attending one of her nationwide conferences, women launch themselves - lit...Read More
Posted by Suze Bragg on January 16, 2010
Using Twitter is still a new concept for me. I enjoy it, I'm using it, but I'm still learning the culture. Here are some tools that are helping me organize and use Twitter more effectively: Hootsuite: I think it's the easiest way to manage multiple social media tools. Plus I can track statistics, manage multiple users on different platforms (Twitter work account vs Facebook personal accounts, etc.). And I can easily manage what people are saying about the brands I manage. Twitbacks: I learned that only a novices uses the free Twitter backgrounds and having your own branded one is much better (oh the pressure....). But I use Hootsuite, so I never see people's backgrounds. ...Read More Industries: Technology
Posted by Suze Bragg on January 13, 2010
It's 2010 and the shift that started back in 1994 has officially landslided into a digital state. Although I love reading The New York Times print edition on Sundays while lounging for hours on my couch, I absorb most of my news through online sources. I shift through magazine headlines and gaze at pictures while waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store, but then I return home to read the full stories on their websites. Having been working in the online space since 1994, it's interesting (fascinating actually) to watch the whole world go crazy online in the last 4 years. I love researching just about everybody and anything online and discovering what people discuss: their sex lives, other people's sex lives, the state of the economy, world events, the changing color of their hair. All of this information is a marketer's dream. ...Read More
Posted by Sima Dahl on January 12, 2010
Remember this one? "When a butterfly flaps its wings, does the weather change in China?" If the butterfly is named Google, the answer is most definitely yes! Real-Time Search Google is once again changing the nature of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with their new real-time search. Thanks to partnerships with social networking powerhouses Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca and Twitter, a basic search on Google now delivers a "dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web." Try it for yourself. Type a popular company name like Pepsi or Dell into your Google search bar. Next click on "latest results" or "latest" in the search options menu to see real-time tweets, blogs and other news scrolling on your screen as it happens. What does all this mean for you?...Read More Industries: Sales and Marketing Industries: Sales and Marketing
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