Conteaxtualized communications

A sample social media event marketing check sheet to help you plan and execute a social strategy around your marketing events.

When creating a business card, keep in mind that it will be a memento in someone's wallet or purse to remind them of your meeting. So make sure your card includes these top 5 elements of the well-designed business card.

Want a more dedicated and loyal customer base? Try business branding characterization profiling, and you will find a new level of success for your brand.

As more and more companies take to the Internet to have a shot at a greater level of success, branding becomes ever more important. It has been said a million times by now, but a company without a website is most likely a failing one, and that is becoming more evident now than ever before. If you want people to find you, there has to be a way they can remember you, and usually that is how you have branded yourself. It’s what you stand for so to speak. Business branding characterization is one of the most important aspects of any branding. Missing out on what your brand stands for is like forgetting to fill up the pool before you go swimming. There’s just no point in branding yourself at all if you have no idea what characterization approach you should take.

Sometimes you will find a hint in the company’s name when it comes to what branding characterization approach they have taken. However, it’s usually through their advertising that you will see it more clearly. Business branding in itself is not hard, it’s the approach to make it eye-catching and appealing that is the hard part. If you get your characterization right, you can be sure your business branding campaign will be a true success no matter how you look at it.

To give you a better understanding of what business branding characterization is, I found an infographic that outlines some of the most common characterizations. The infographic (design by Joanna Worthington) is called What Does Your Brand Stand For?, and it is a great visualization of some rather appealing ways to brand your business.

Many professionals are turning to social media as a place of trust for their purchasing decisions and it’s no different for the IT industry. IT decision makers have a highly-regarded task of ensuring they recommend the best products and services for their organizations.
LinkedIn, Forrester Consulting, and Research Now zeroed in on these professionals to see how they utilize social media, including its effects on their purchasing decisions and how they engage with social.
According to Michael Weir, Head of Category Development for the Technology Industry at LinkedIn, “It’s no surprise that [IT decision makers] are heavy users of social networks. In fact, 85% have used at least one social network for business purposes. What’s surprising is that 73% have engaged with an IT vendor on a social network – underscoring the value of the channel for IT marketers. Even more revealing is the fact that social media is now a critical source of influence across the entire decision making process, not just during the initial research phase.”

This ’Social Media Statistics and Facts 2012′ infographic is packed with statistics and facts of all major social media platform including – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube as well as blogging.

There are some surprising stats here. For instance links about sex are shared on Facebook more than any other type. That comes as a real surprise.

It highlights the growing immensity of Instagram with as many as five million imges uploaded daily. And to confirm that little is changing with Pinterest when it comes to the gender split with more than 90% of its Facebook fans being women.

What else do we have? LinkedIn gets two new users every second while three million new blogs come on line each month.

SoLoMo, short for “social-local-mobile,” is essentially the addition of local information to search engine results in order to capitalize on the increasing use of mobile devices.

SoLoMo has also evolved to include mobile-specific offers pushed out to consumers based on their current location. If you are among the growing population that now has smart phones, you have no doubt seen and even taken advantage of these kinds of offers.

In this infographic from Monetate, learn how SoLoMo is having an overall impact on traditional eCommerce, and how consumers are using their smartphones to access social and local sites which ultimately influence purchases. It also also touches on the showrooming effect, providing retailers a guide to making the most out of SoLoMo opportunities.

Graphic design is good for business, so where do you start with making graphic designing your career?

The top five things to consider before moving for a graphic design position will be your job title, the location of the business, how much education is needed and if there are better prospects with more education, experience, where you work whether for yourself, a small business or a large design firm.

So, where are the best locations to put your graphic design skills to use? The top five cities include, Salt Lake City, Utah with an average salary being $55,064 with a cost of living rank at 98 and 30% of workforce in creative class. Next up we have San Antonio, Texas with an average salary of $46,203, Bridgeport, Connecticut with an average salary of $78,353, and Newark, New Jersey with an average salary of $40,000. And then we have Austin, Texas with an average salary of $54,827, a cost of living rank of 94, and a percentage of workforce in creative class of 36.8%.

A lot of graphic designers are self employed, 26.3% to be exactly. Want to make more money than you are already being a graphic designer? On average you’re making $48,000, but if you were an interactive designer you could be making $64,000, or even $99,000 if you were an information architect.

Now, more than ever, we face complex problems that designers are uniquely capable to solve by integrating technology, business and human factors. A few tips for web design and startup include responsive web design, bringing on a designer co-founder, making sure to stand out from the crowd, and having a pleasurable and functional goal is the overall experience. So from startup to big business, maximize your experience.

It requires some knowledge in order to be seen through all the social media noise. These social media marketing strategies might help you reach more people.

Infographics have become more popular with the rise of social media, fuelling the need for instant results by providing content in bite-size chunks.

Calculating your social media ROI is tricky. To help you figure it out, this infographic presents some of the most popular formulas to measure your success.

As the holiday season nears, consumers are estimated to spend over half a trillion dollars on shopping expenses alone. With such high spending numbers, it’s interesting to know where all the money goes. Using data provided by the National Retail Federation’s survey, many interesting facts about holiday shopping become known like that smartphone usage to buy gifts have been steadily rising throughout the years. As such, mobile websites are constantly being created to cater consumers on the go due to the rising use of such devices.

Beginning on Black Friday, the holiday shopping season starts for retailers even though some consumers shop for holiday gifts months in advance. However, with the bulk of holiday purchases happening in late November and December, retailers focus their promotions and deals during this time to lure consumers to spend as much as possible. People simply love to shop for the holidays while spending time with their loved ones.

In addition, research suggests that a large portion of holiday shopping is spent on gifts by people buying on online and at local stores. Consider making a budget to buy your gifts, groceries, and holiday decorations to save money during the busy holiday season. Are you ready for your holiday shopping?

Want a more dedicated and loyal customer base? Try business branding characterization profiling, and you will find a new level of success for your brand.

As more and more companies take to the Internet to have a shot at a greater level of success, branding becomes ever more important. It has been said a million times by now, but a company without a website is most likely a failing one, and that is becoming more evident now than ever before. If you want people to find you, there has to be a way they can remember you, and usually that is how you have branded yourself. It’s what you stand for so to speak. Business branding characterization is one of the most important aspects of any branding. Missing out on what your brand stands for is like forgetting to fill up the pool before you go swimming. There’s just no point in branding yourself at all if you have no idea what characterization approach you should take.

Sometimes you will find a hint in the company’s name when it comes to what branding characterization approach they have taken. However, it’s usually through their advertising that you will see it more clearly. Business branding in itself is not hard, it’s the approach to make it eye-catching and appealing that is the hard part. If you get your characterization right, you can be sure your business branding campaign will be a true success no matter how you look at it.

To give you a better understanding of what business branding characterization is, I found an infographic that outlines some of the most common characterizations. The infographic (design by Joanna Worthington) is called What Does Your Brand Stand For?, and it is a great visualization of some rather appealing ways to brand your business.

How many clicks should you expect from a Twitter marketing campaign? This infographic will show you the statistics for the average CTR of a tweeted link.

There are a lot of companies, brands and people who sign up for a Twitter account for one single reason only. They want to market their product, service or even themselves in a cost effective way. Twitter, and almost every other social networking platform, is great for that. It’s pretty much free and the return can be magnificent. However, as with everything, Twitter has become an ordinary occurrence in millions of people’s lives, and that makes it harder and harder to really stand out. Getting people to click on the links in your tweets is not only hard, but it seems the interactions and engagement from them are dwindling. Twitter marketing is not a lost cause though. If you do it the right way, you can still make a huge impact on your return traffic.

Everyone who has stayed on top of their statistics knows that the click through rate of a Twitter marketing link is not the same as it was a couple of years ago. Today we see people with millions of followers tweet something, and the return traffic is not even comparable to what it used to be. But that is no reason to stop using Twitter as a marketing platform. If you find the right following and continuously engage on your feed, you will stir up more click throughs and increase your traffic return.

If you have ever wondered what the average Twitter marketing link click through rate is, you should have a look at this fresh infographic called What Results Should You Expect? presented by Joanna Franchetti. The average trend is that the more followers you have, the less your Twitter marketing click through rate will be. It most likely has to do with the fact that with more followers, you get less and less personal with all of them. That in turn will make people see your tweet, but not click it.

This article and infographic was posted by Ted Nguyen for his blog.

Intro:

One of the most pressing questions whether you're new to social media or a social media maven is: What's the best way to post information or share content to optimize your reach

Compendium, a content marketing firm conducted a study of more than 200 companies to determine how social media professionals may optimize their engagement with both business-to-business-to-consumer conversations.

What they found is consistent with what Ted Nguyen has experienced and he has demonstrated that he clearly knows what he's doing

Here are some highlights:

"My experience in sharing more than 21,000 tweets and Facebook posts to my more than 82,000 Twitter followers and Facebook friends is consistent with the study’s findings"

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**I recommend the hours between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (Pacific Time) or 1 to 4 p.m. (Eastern Time) are the best times for Twitter and Facebook to optimize social engagement engagement.

**I find that tweets shared earlier in the week do better than those sent later in the week. I also have discovered that Facebook posts do best Wednesday early afternoon.

**if you look at Ted's social shares, they run around the clock. he tries his best to engage with people in real time or near real time.

Selected by Jan Gordon covering: "Curation, Social Business and Beyond" 

Read article and see infographic here: [http://bit.ly/VG0xGL]

Infographic by DKNewMedia

Survey by Compendium

Social business design – adopting the use of social technology, flattening corporate structure and shifting towards less siloed operational models – helps organizations achieve business objectives as the marketplace becomes more digitally connected.

I’m fascinated by the evolving thought leadership around the subject of social business.

I believe in the idea that organizations adopting the use of social technology, flattening their corporate structure and making the shift towards less siloed communication and operational models will be in a better position to achieve their business objectives as the marketplace becomes more digitally connected.

As an idea or concept, social business is complex. The folks at Dachis Group offer this definition:

Social business draws on trends in technology (e.g., powerful mobile devices, widespread availability of high-speed Internet access, low cost of data storage), work (e.g., always-on culture, globalization), and society (e.g., propensity to share). Companies should care about social business because they can improve business outcomes (i.e., increase revenue or decrease costs). The core principles touch on all areas of a business, whether for business-to-customer engagement, employee-to-employee collaboration, or supply chain optimization. Making social business work requires focus on a company’s culture, connections, content exchanges, and measurement and analytics.

Unfortunately, as the term social business begins to move along the same popularity arc as “social media” it is getting overused and mis-defined to the point of clouding people’s ability to connect with its meaning and context. Recently this reached a boiling point for my esteemed colleague Jason Falls who proclaimed that the term “social business” is bullshit.

Semantics aside, social business presents a set of important ideas that organizational leaders are incumbent to discuss and understand. A post recently published by Dave Gray really helps crystallize the idea of social business design. In The Connected Company Gray uses a series of “city” metaphors to clearly explain how a social business is a “complex, adaptive system.”

His post inspired the following information design. My goal here is to present a visual interpretation of these ideas aimed at building high level understanding and prompting discussion.