The Only Social Media Question You Need to Answer

By on   /   Blog, Brand Marketing, Interactive Media, Social Media Marketing  
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Do you want to understand interactive marketing (social media), or do you want someone to handle it for you? It’s an important and honest question you should ask yourself. It can help you decide where your time is best spent and what’s most important to you. We have clients that know they need interactive marketing, but don’t understand what it is and where they will find value. It’s important for us to educate our customers on what interactive marketing is and how to measure the value. We should note that not every business will use interactive marketing the same, along

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Facebook’s Graph Search Just Made Content Marketing More Powerful

By on   /   Blog, Brand Marketing, Interactive Media, Social Media Marketing  

If you missed the announcement, today, Mark Zuckerberg of FaceBook introduced a new search query function for Facebook called Graph Search. In a nutshell, Graph Search gives the search option in Facebook more of an honest “query-style” approach – wherein it will search for your specific terms as usual, but also suggest related results based on varying degrees of separation between your query and the related returns. So, from a content marketing standpoint, if you have been strategically building relevant content through your posts on and to Facebook, Facebook’s Graph Search just made your content marketing more powerful! From NBCNews.com:

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Use Video To Generate Interest In Your Brand

By on   /   Blog, Brand Marketing, Education and Training, Social Media Marketing  

A client asked me the other day, because I work quite a bit in video, if I encouraged others to use video to generate stronger interest in their brand.  Generally… YES.  But why? At the time, I couldn’t give him a definitive answer. I use many sources to create interest in the brands I manage, so to single out video made it difficult to communicate the sole benefit to their brand. Eventually, the conversation diverted to other topics, but I just couldn’t forget the question. So, out of curiosity, I clicked on the YouTube link on one of that customer’s

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How To Fight The Cost Of “Free” Media

By on   /   Blog, Brand Marketing, SPOKE News  

There’ IS a price to “FREE” media production; while it may not show on the books, it will show on your brand. Buying radio or television media production is every creative’s worst nightmare. The schedules are hard to plan – especially in the “Political” and “Sporting” blitz months. Any positive calendar can be preempted at the drop of a very well financed hat.  Budgeting is often a guessing game and costly without the right media partner or a person at the station “going to bat” for you. And God forbid if the spots are produced at the station…   (think

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Can Peer Pressure Harm Your TRUE Brand?

By on   /   Blog, Brand Marketing, Education and Training, Social Media Marketing  

We all want to be liked.  We all want to be the coolest and we all care what others think of us.  This is true in the corporate world, as well as in our personal lives.  But how do you know when to take peers’ “advice” and when to ignore it? In a previous business life, I worked in retail.  Fast-paced, exciting, challenging – and Brand centered.  One day, a “Secret Shopper” came into our store, quietly sizing us up, checking our customer service skills and the overall shopping experience.  His “findings” were then written into a not-so-nice blog post

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What’s In A Social Media Name?

By on   /   Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing  

One must be mindful of company name when joining social media outlets. Facebook and Twitter have millions of users so one assumes this tool would be on the forefront of any business person’s mind before making a huge name announcement. Alas, last week Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced that Netflix has transformed its DVD via mail side of the business into Qwikster. This change makes sense with streaming video gaining popularity while one-day Qwikster may go the way of cassette tapes. Although, that is neither here nor there. The real issue at hand is that the people at Netflix neglected

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Social Media = ENGAGEMENT Not Numbers!

By on   /   Blog, Social Media Marketing  

Most of us realize by now that a big number of followers doesn’t immediately equal ENGAGED, RELEVANT or INFLUENTIAL followers, but after a recent conversation, I found this bared repeating. “A big number of followers doesn’t immediately equal ENGAGED, RELEVANT or INFLUENTIAL followers…” We had a client mention wanting to have many more Twitter followers and Facebook fans then they do presently. When pressed as to why, there wasn’t a clear answer. Social media can’t be thought of as a way to create “instant sales” but, instead, as a communication tool to truly build your brand. Companies and businesses never

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VIDEO: “Are You Too Big To SMILE?”

By on   /   Blog, Brand Marketing  

CreateWOWmarketing travels through rural Iowa asking the simple question, “Is your brand too big to smile?” Finding that small town courtesy and respect seems to reflect in a size of company brand as well, Andrew B. Clark (The Brand Chef) questions why and how your brand could benefit from just a simple smile. 🙂

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Finding The Face Of Ag Marketing

By on   /   Blog, Brand Marketing, Education and Training, SPOKE News  

If you didn’t realize it, AGRICULTURE is big business – not just the growing of plants and livestock production aspects, which luckily has seen an uptick even in the struggling financial economy as of late.  We’re talking the business of being involved in the “Ag” world. Agritourism, Ag education, Ag sciences and others have all seen a huge surge of interest and involvement in the past decade. No longer do we drive through the green fields of Iowa, Nebraska and other Midwest states and just see corn, beans, pigs, cows, more corn, more beans, more pigs…  well, you get our

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There’s Smart, Then There’s “Wicked Smaht”

By on   /   Blog, Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing  

The internet has given access to information that just 10 years ago was incredibly hard to find. In a simple Google search, you could find the gross national product of Norway or simply strive to understand what a “Gross National Product” is in the first place. (yes, I had to look it up to just make sure I remembered Econ-101.) 🙂 There, see? I just opened this post with a “Smart” move to the internet to make sure I wasn’t just referencing subject matter that made me sound astute. That’s the conundrum of endlessly accessible content. Some (most, I assume)

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