15 Sites That Will Make or Break Your Brand

This is a great article from the site Inside CRM that every marketing person and business owner should read. Your homework today is to read this article: http://www.insidecrm.com/features/15-sites-make-break-brand-070808/

If you are not familiar with these sites, take some time to check them out. It is hard to keep up with all the new social-media sites, but these are the power-weilders you must know about. Learn how they can affect your brand and how you need to manage and use them.

Have you searched your brand or products on Wikipedia and Google? Do you engage your customers on Twitter? Do you have a channel on YouTube? Posted any videos or searched for videos someone has posted about your products or brands? Read the reviews of your products on Amazon? Launched a Facebook application or joined a group on LinkedIn?

I actually learned about this article from a collegue in the Innovative Marketing, PR, Word-of-Mouth & Buzz Innovators group I belong to on LinkedIn.

There will be a test......well at least a quiz....

Marketing To Succeed in This Economy Lesson 1: Start an e-Mail Newsletter

E-mail newsletters are a cost-effective way of introducing new products or services, keeping in touch with your clients, expanding your client base, and gaining publicity. If you don't currently have a newsletter, I encourage you to start one!

My favorite e-Mail marketing tool is Emma (www.myemma.com). The company is based in Nashville, TN, and they have accounts and plans for any size company. Their staff is knowledgeable and friendly, and their site provides easy to use newsletter templates and awesome stats on your campaigns.

To build your e-mail list, make sure you invite customers and visitors on your site to subscribe to your newsletter at every opportunity. Make it easy to subscribe and don't hide the box! If you are an e-commerce site, include an opt-in to the list in your check-out process. Hold a giveaway contest or sweepstakes on your site and invite registrants to opt-in to your list. To really expand your list, sponsor an online promotion on another higher-traffic site and gather subscriptions for your list from their visitors who enter the contest.

Providing compelling content in your newsletter is really important. Include features and tips that are interesting and helpful to your audience as well as special deals or discounts available only in the newsletter. Add calls to action in the newsletter that encourage click-through to your site such as: providing half an article with a click to read the rest, describing a new tip or trick for your product and click to read the full "how-to" description, or tease a contest with click to enter. Last but not least, don't forget to invite recipients to forward the newsletter to their friends.

While it takes time to research, write, and produce a newsletter that will be relevant to your clients, the benefits you will receive in return will be worth it! If you would like help starting, updating or writing your newsletter, please contact me for a free consultation and quote.

Help A Reporter Out

To all my reporter and PR friends.... Found this great email list / community called Help A Reporter Out. Sign-up and you get daily emails from reporters looking for sources. Also reporters can sign-up to post about stories they are working on for which they need sources. Great way to place your clients in features and the best news of all the list is free of charge!

Marketing Reps and Publicists sign-up here: http://www.helpareporter.com/
Reporter/editor/journalismbuddies here: www.helpareporter.com/press

Very cool link for the day!!!!

Image of Haymarket

In case you haven't been there. Here are a few images from Haymarket:

About The Blog - "Get Your Fresh Marketing Here"

As a kid growing up in Massachusetts, my Dad would often take my sister and me for a ride on the 'T' to Haymarket on Saturday mornings in Boston. "Buck a Pound, Dolla' a box!" "T'ree pounds a buck!" "Get Your Cherries He'a, Fresh Cherries!" "Clams on a Half Shell, one for two, t'ree for five!" The cacophony of vendors hawking their offerings and the crowds of customers pushing through the rows of stalls at this hundred year old outdoor market was both exhilarating and overwhelming to me as a young girl. The aromas and visuals from the fresh sliced fruit were enticing, but the choices boggling, and squawking vendors intimidating as I tried to decide what to buy with my tightly gripped dollar.

Today’s business environment can feel very much the same. With the shaky economy, global competition, new technologies, and outlets emerging and morphing faster than ever, marketing choices can be overwhelming. I created this blog to help sort through some of these new opportunities and provide some insight and education into innovative ways you can market your business and yourself!

Fresh marketing ideas he’a, get ‘em while their hot!