Pulling Back The Curtain On Text Message Mobile Marketing

Ask 100 marketers if they use direct mail, email, social media, TV, radio, and/or outdoor in their marketing strategies and campaigns and the majority of them will respond in the affirmative.

Now, ask them if they use any mobile marketing tactics and they’ll tell you that mobile marketing comes right after taking a magic marker and drawing an ad on a bathroom wall in terms of priorities and hierarchy. Am I the only one who finds it amazing – utterly amazing mind you, that despite it’s rapid rise in usage and popularity, mobile marketing – especially text message mobile marketing, remains a mystery and enigma to many marketers?

I am surely not the only one who thinks this way, right?

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The Art of Balance

I’m a klutz – or as they say in Central Pennsylvania – dopic.  So, I really admire people that are more coordinated than I am (which is pretty much everyone).  Last night, we enjoyed a date night at the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by our beloved Maestro Stuart Malina.  What made the performance particularly memorable were the additional performers on stage last evening.  “Cirque de la Symphonie” featured acrobats and aerialists who amazed the audience with choreographed moves, accompanied by the orchestra’s masterful artistry.  I was particularly enrapt with the final performance by two bronzed muscular men. Those in attendance were spellbound by their feats of strength, balance and grace.

As I watched, I wondered what propelled these athletes to choose this occupation.  What discipline and practice it must have taken to achieve such synchronicity!  The countless hours of training and experimentation, the injuries that were likely sustained are beyond my comprehension.  And I’ve wondered similar thoughts about those musicians whose performances we so look forward to as they weave their own magic, beneath the stars of the glorious Harrisburg Forum.

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5 CMOs Identify The Characteristics of Successful Teams

Strategy, no matter how insightful and comprehensive, does not insure execution. Action plans, no matter how detailed or innovative, are no guarantee goals will be realized. And every leader that has managed through crisis knows benchmarks are not the be-all-end-all measure of resources.

The market is shaped by teams that move boundaries and redefine arithmetic.

Put another way — whether in sport or enterprise, successful teams are those whose measure is greater than the proverbial sum of its parts.

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Social Media has Played a Significant Role in the Rise of Marketing to Women… better keep an eye on the Latinas from #LATISM12

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Social has taken away numerous connection barriers between brand and consumer, giving brands more direct access to not just push information out to consumers, but to actively engage in ongoing conversation with consumers and their networks. Since women, who control 85% of household spending, are the majority of social media users, it makes sense that marketers naturally have turned their focus to marketing to women. They hold the purse strings AND have the highest and most interrelated social media presence.

SlideShare: The Quiet Giant Of Content Marketing

Marketers and advertisers the world over are constantly trying to find the “next big thing.” The one thing that will allow them to stand out from the crowd. Back in the day of course it was TV, radio and direct mail or email for example. Then came the digital revolution and mobile marketing and social media marketing took center stage – and rightly so.

Today, it’s content marketing.

While all the aforementioned mediums remain and always will be key players in any integrated marketing communications campaign, clearly content marketing is the next big thing – at least for right now.

And a major tool in the content marketing arsenal may be one that many of you have heard of and visited, but perhaps have not used to date – SlideShare.

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18 brilliant books on word of mouth

Remember books? Yeah, those things that are like really long blogs, made up of a massive string of tweets, which we used to call ‘sentences’. You can download them onto an ereader or, if you’re really old-school, buy them all wrapped up in paper like a sweet-smelling present from the past.

Most of us are now doing the former; last year, Amazon’s sales of ebooks outstripped those of print books for the first time. But the problem with ebooks is they’re difficult to share, and sharing is surely the moral imperative of our time. What’s more, I am a massive personal advocate of the print book as the ultimate in innovative technology (I’ll be talking more about that at an upcoming event on ‘Writing The Future’ with The Royal Society and the Arthur C Clarke Award – stay tuned).

So here at 1000heads London HQ I oversee a modest library from which any ‘Head (or trustworthy friend) can borrow. Our selections are crowdsourced internally, with an ongoing budget for purchasing any decent suggestion.

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Should you work for free?

That depends on what you mean by “work” and by “free.”

Work is what you do as a professional, when you make a promise that involves rigor and labor (physical and emotional) and risk. Work is showing up at the appointed time, whether or not you feel like it. Work is creating value on demand, and work (for the artist) means putting all of it (or most of it) on the line.

So it’s not work when you indulge your hobby and paint an oil landscape, but it’s work when you agree to paint someone’s house by next week. And it’s not work when you cook dinner for friends, but it’s work when you’re a sous chef on the line on Saturday night.

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Six Business Mistakes You Should Never Make Twice

Failure. It’s a word no marketer, business owner, entrepreneur wants to hear, but it can be a valuable lesson. Earlier this year, I wrote about the one mistake retail brands make when it comes to Twitter: not engaging with customers on a regular basis.

That’s one big failure.

Alan E. Hall has seen many related mistakes during his 40+ years as a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and venture capitalist.  Like most of us, he’s made his fair share of foolish business mistakes along the way. Some even caused the end of a venture.

He’s watched others make mistakes in their businesses as well, some very visible.  Fortunately, Hall learned something powerful and vital from each mistake, no matter the outcome.  Big lesson learned: Don’t make them again.

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Where Social Is Going in 2013

Here’s my prediction: Social will get the ‘third degree’ in 2013. I’m starting to see some backlash in the press about social media marketing. The avalanche of startups in the social space over the last couple years are causing VCs to hold their wallets. And Facebook’s stock recovery isn’t happening fast enough.

And so it goes. Nothing to fear. The evolution is almost predictable. Think back to the industry ‘movements’ in the 90s – such as ASP, CRM, Web 2.0, Web/TV convergence.  All of them followed a similar path, and yet, have become ‘mainstream’. ASP = Cloud. CRM = Social CRM. Web 2.0 is just the way things work on the web. And the Web/TV convergence is happening in Social TV. We had the right ideas…just a lot of creative destruction to figure things out, including the nomenclature.

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