Kickstart Your Online Marketing with Three Social Media Tips

By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent

I’m a firm believer that planning is critical to the success of any small business marketing campaign. If you’ve already planned your social media campaign, kudos to you. If not, here are a few tips to help you satisfy that need to “do something” without derailing your forthcoming plan.

1. Plan the time to share and engage. It’s easy to set-up a Facebook page or a Twitter profile, but no one gets excited about old, stale posts. If you want to start the year by connecting with your fans you should, but plan resources for maintaining the stream. Set aside a few minutes each morning to converse with your fans or assign a team member to do it throughout the day. But, don’t start something that you can’t maintain.
2. Baby steps. It’s easy to be bedazzled by new exciting social media tools, but stick with what you know. If you have a lot of photos, consider starting a Flickr page. If you are already on Facebook with a personal profile, start a fan page for your business. Start with what you know and assess anything new when you create your campaign strategy. This will save you time and provide more effective engagement with your fans.

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CEOs Weigh in on Government 2.0 at Obama Administration Briefing

By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent

On January 14, the Obama administration held a series of events to support its campaign promise to use technology to make government more transparent. A selection of executives and CEOs, largely from the tech sector, were paired with government officials and asked their opinions on how technology could be better used to streamline government programs.

Among those in attendance was Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s List and Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer. The administration is pushing for the use of new technology in an effort to improve the efficiency of antiquated government processes using technology similar to the private sector.

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Why Pepsi Traded in a Super Bowl Ad for Social Media

By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent

The Super Bowl is right around the corner. And what’s the best part of the Super Bowl? The commercials, of course. This year, Pepsi has stunned the advertising world by skipping their beloved 30 second, $4 million dollar commercial for something that they think will be more effective – a social media campaign.

By investing $20 million dollars in a combined social media and crowdsourcing campaign, Pepsi appears to be trying to connect with its fans for the long-haul. Pepsi is hoping its “Refresh Everything” campaign will have a longer shelf life than the typical Super Bowl commercial.

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Getting the Most from LinkedIn

By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent

The face of LinkedIn has undergone a variety of changes since the last time I blogged about it a year ago. LinkedIn’s development team has added a variety of widgets giving users more functionality. LinkedIn can now be synced with Twitter. The design has experienced a much-needed facelift. But, that just scratches the surface. Let’s break it down.

• The Application Directory adds new content to your profile.
  • Reading List by Amazon.com - enables you to share books you are enjoying.
  • Box.net Files - share files with other LinkedIn users.
  • Polls - this market research tool enables you to collect data from your connections.

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SEO and the Professional Services Firm

By Aaron Taylor

Each month at Hinge, we get a few highly qualified leads from companies that find us through online search. Many of these companies have never heard of us and quite a few are eager to talk to us even though our office is in another part of the country.

So it’s disconcerting how often I hear professional services firm principals tell me they don’t need search engine optimization. “That’s not how clients find us,” they say. “We get most of our business through referrals.” Or sometimes, “prospects only look at our website after they’ve met us.”

Those sentiments, while valid to a point, fail to account for the business opportunities these firms never see: the people — seriously interested people — who use Internet search to locate professional services that are relevant to their needs.

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Digital vs. Traditional Marketing — Which is Best for You?

By Jen Sterling

After 25 years building a reputation for historical preservation, a successful architecture firm wants to reposition itself. They hope to broaden their appeal and offer a wider range of opportunities for their younger architects. This firm wants to maintain its distinguished historical focus, but it would like to broaden its reputation to include contemporary design. Which would server them better — a traditional or digital marketing approach?

Choosing between digital or traditional marketing — or deciding if you have to make a choice at all — depends on your marketing objectives. In the case of this architecture firm, a tension between the attributes of experience and innovation presents itself.

Experience or innovation? Which is better suited to digital marketing?  Which fits more naturally with traditional marketing? In my opinion, neither traditional nor digital marketing has a lock on experience or innovation. A better question might be, which will take them where they want to go?

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