From Fast Company

Check out the graphs and trends.

State of Internet Music

From the article “Interestingly, it wasn’t Apple that Garland viewed as the most important name in music, even though the company’s iPods, iPhones, and iTunes indicate otherwise. “YouTube is increasingly the category killer,” argued Garland. “When people ask me what is the biggest name in music in my opinion, they want me to say Apple. I usually answer: YouTube.”

The music business is shifting.  It is setting the stage for our business models in “everything” to change.  Products?  Services?  Can you have a product without a service, or, for that matter, a service that does not somehow connect to the web?  There are lessons to learn in marketing, product development, strategy, information technology, and just about everything community and commercial.

From the article ” Pandora now represents 1.7% of all radio listening–really a shocking figure to think about.”.   Wow, FREE service, possibly paid service overtaking the ad space?   Lessons to be learned here?

Choice rules.  Custom selection of music is killing “album” sales.  From the article,  ”The music business historically has been built around albums,” explained Silverman. “This album-centrism is like saying the sun revolves around the Earth. We don’t listen to albums now; we listen to collections of songs.”

What are the Lessons to be learned from this article?

Thank you Jason

From: The New York Times

With our choices for entertainment and “content consumption” being ever wider, and the traditional venues for advertising becoming increasingly less effective, advertisers are looking for more places to place TARGETED ads.

Product Placement in Music Videos

Are you seeing more of this?  Are you tolerant of this?  Do you expect this?   Will you pay more for no ads?

From HubSpot

This blog posting lists 27 “Lessons” for B2B Marketers.  B2BMarketing Lessons   I really like the recognition of the role of keyword driven content in a number of the items listed.  The focus on integrated marketing tactics across traditional, social, and online tactics is also interesting and important for B2B marketers to understand.

What do you like? Are there any tactics or lessons you would add?

Thanks Hugh

This article is from GOOGLE

Doodle for GOOGLE

From the article ” Doodles are known as the decorative changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists and scientists.”

I have always enjoyed the doodles, but did not know the history.   One of my Favorites is featured in the article, Einstein’s Birthday

CNN Article on GOOGLE Doodle

Perhaps you might submit a suggestion.  Check out the history and pick a favorite.

From Constant Contact

Better Email Subject Lines

I found this brief article with 6 direct points on how to write a better email campaign communication.  When creating your marketing tactics, you need to understand your customer or prospect to get their attention.  Once you have it, do not forget to have a well integrated, measureable  campaign with clear objectives and a great, valuble “call to action” included in the communication.

What do you think?

From Hub Spot

Email Marketing Optimization

One of the tactics in an integrated marketing tactical plan is email marketing linked to a well designed landing page.   The article linked here has some great tips to consider when using email in your tactical marketing  mix.

From the article  “Like any good analytical marketer, you’re always testing, measuring, and improving your marketing campaigns. So you reach your email marketing program – what’s first? The copy? The image? The call to action? Actually, none of that. The first step in email marketing optimization is: your landing page.”

From   Wordtracker

This article gives some great tactics for link building.  It is, of course a promotion for services and products, however there is some wonderful information in the article on how to run an effective link building campaign, 62 steps in fact.

62 steps to the definitive link building campaign

What do you think?

From Corporate Report Wisconsin

Thanks Mary for sharing this article with me.

Atwitter over Social media

We have been discussing the use of social media in the marketing mix.   We had been looking for specific examples of success with including Twitter in the marketing mix and we find two in this article.

From the article “The Tweets drove recipients to a Web site where they could receive more information,“We scheduled 14 surgeries because of that Twitter cast.”

Here is one example of what appears to be a pretty good ROI on a social media investment.

What examples do you have?

From Corporate Reports Wisconsin

Atwitter in the NEW North

The survey of companies in the “New North” supports that Social media is on the rise in Wisconsin among businesses.

From the article “Of those who do use social media, they tend to use it to connect with/communicate with others in the community or their industry (39 percent), to connect with/ communicate with clients (31 percent) and to gather information or research specific topics (27 percent). Just 22 percent indicated they use social media to find or connect with potential new clients.”

The article also states that of the companies using social media 79% feel the networking has benefited their firms.

Is your organization using social media?  What are you using? Is it helping? How?

From OPEN Small Business

10 Small Business Social Media Resources

The link above has comments and links to some really great (IMHO) ideas for small business’ use of Social Media.

As for adding Social Media to the marketing mix, fantastic!

What do you think?

Thanks Mike.

YouTube Video

In this video, Warren Buffet appears as a rocker to make some point. Is it an endorsement of the company his firm owns?   Anyone care to comment?

From Harvard Business Review

Article Abstract — Customer-centered Brand Management

This article says that companies are focusing on the lifetime value of their customers.  Really.  I agree that they should be, however,  I wonder how many actually are managing the Lifetime Value of their customers.  The article promo states “Yet, few companies have come to terms with the implications of that idea for their marketing management.”  The idea implications of course is that Lifetime Value Matters.

The article promo also goes on to suggest that managers are focused on brand equity rather than customer value.  The article authors suggest some things that managers should be doing such as ” replacing traditional brand managers with a new position–the customer segment manager; targeting brands to as narrow an audience as possible; developing the capability and the mind-set to hand off customers from one brand to another within the company; and changing the way brand equity is measured by basing calculations on individual, rather than average, customer data.”

I will be grabbing my hard copy of HBR and reading this one.  Most likely, it will be discussed in an upcoming class.

Comments?

From WordTracker

SES London Takeaways Article

Lots of great tips and ideas including some videos.

Here is one: ”#56) SEO is becoming more popular and will eventually overtake PPC and become the primary method of online marketing.”
Rand Fishkin

Who else has a favorite?

From WordTracker

The LongTail of Keyword Research –Single Keywords are for Losers

this article gives some excellent insight into Single Word Keywords.  Time is precious, so is money.  The evidence is in, keyword phrases in the “Long Tail” is the way to go.

Fromn the article “How do you make a profit from keywords that bring just one visit a month? Easy, you target lots of them at once – you target groups of keywords (keyword niches). Here’s how…

Let’s start simply with one page. Your SEO might focus on one or two keywords but you’re really targeting those keywords and their long tails. And the more relevant and related words on your page, the more of that tail you can get results for.”

READ the Bullet points in this article after the subsection called “How to make a profit in the Long Tail”

What did you think?  Do you agree?

From HBR

Brand Report Card

This article looks quite good; I will be reading it in detail.  The summary has some excellent information.  From the summary, “Tuck School professor Kevin Lane Keller lays out the ten characteristics that the strongest brands share. He starts with the relationship of the brand to the customer: The strongest brands excel at delivering the benefits customers truly desire, he says. They stay relevant to customers over time. Pricing truly reflects consumers’ perceptions of value. Keller then moves on to consider marketing strategy and implementation: Strong brands are properly positioned. The brand stays consistent. Sub-brands relate to one another in an orderly way within a portfolio of brands.”

What do you think?  Good read?

Do you think that BRAND is growing in importance as I do, or, is this not something that all managers need to pay attention to?

From Baseline Magazine

Slideshow makes a series of observations  “What’s Wrong with Microsoft”

Do you agree?

From Marketing Power (American Marketing Association)

Social Media Virtual Conference — February 25

Check it out.

From BtoB Magazine Online

Twitter Tools for Teams reports that  “Today, it would be rare to find a marketer that not only is managing a single Twitter feed—either for themselves or a companywide feed—but more than likely juggling a slew of them across different departments or, in the case of marketing agencies, across a cross- section of clients.”

It seems that TWITTER is becoming a TOOL that must be considered in everyone’s marketing mix.

The article reports that tools are emerging to manage multiple Twitter Feeds.  Do you have your first one yet?

Thank you Wendy and Mike.

From The Today Show

Esquire Magazine Augmented Reality Video

What do you think?

From Baseline Magazine

Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Like, create Twitter Friendly headlines, plan in Analog.

Seems like a good approach, seems to work.