icemanbaldy

SMBs to Increase 2010 Email Marketing, Social Media Spend | Small Business Trends

via smallbiztrends.com

Summary results from a VerticalResponse study that reports on planned spending for email marketing, social media, search engine marketing, banner advertising, television ad, and radio advertising. It appears that business owners intend to spend more money on getting more social.

WallStats - 389 Years Ago

via www.wallstats.com

This chart provides a typographic journey through four centuries of black history. I found it while Stumbling through sites before deciding to turn in for the night. Nice concept.

A Report from the 2009 African American Interent Marketing Summit

I attended the second annual African American Internet Marketing Summit yesterday in Chicago at the downtown Wyndham hotel. I didn't attend last year and was excited about this year's topical focus on Internet Marketing. Ken Smikle does a great job of organizing this event and Interactive One was one of several outstanding sponsors. I met a few folks that I will continue to network with and all-in-all the information that was presented was quite helpful.

OVERALL ASSESSMENT

The summit caters more to marketing professionals who are working with companies that have realized the need or are aspiring to improve their connection with the large and lucrative African American consumer via online platforms. The summit doesn't quite hit the mark in addressing the unique needs of African American internet marketers who are using online tools to sell products and services or in educating aspiring marketers in the tools of the internet marketing trade. You get a bit of that but it's more of a session for dealing with the big guys and successfully executing profitable marketing campaigns that serve our community and provide a financial return for advertisers. It's difficult to meet every need and African American Online Marketing is a fairly broad theme. The focus of the summit is appropriate for the audience and the industry speakers and presentations are spot on. I'll probably attend again next year, but there is still a need for educational seminars for African American internet marketing entrepreneurs who are serving the needs of small businesses and/or not-for-profit organizations who need to establish an online presence.

PRESENTATIONS

• The Latest Research on African-Americans, Social Media and the Internet: Oveda Brown, Vice President of Multicultural Marketing for Arbitron gave a presentation on The Latest Research on African Americans, Social Media and the Internet. It was obvious to everyone in the room that the digital divide has closed and that African Americans are over-indexing in many categories of internet use when you factor in mobile devices that have internet access capabilities. We are huge users spending six hours a week several times a day visiting dating sites, looking for jobs and downloading movies among other things. We're also getting much more comfortable making significant purchases and lead all categories in mobile usage.
• Chaos or Opportunity: How to Navigate Economic Uncertainty. Kevin McFall, President of Red Clay Digital and Co-Founder/VP of RushmoreDrive.com and Angela Benton, Publisher of BlackWeb 2.0 provided an excellent panel discussion regarding the challenges and opportunities for Black media platforms as they related to advertising funding and corporate support. They shared their belief that targeted African American online media platforms can be viable whether black-owned or otherwise but they must be clear about their purpose, their marketing strategy, and the real extent of their reach as a basis for financial backing. The African American market is a niche and there are many niches within the niche. Content producers must be comfortable in knowing that the size of their audience may not be a big enough draw for significant advertising revenue and a different funding model may be required.
• Digital Decisions: Is Your Content Audience or Advertiser Driven? Smokey Fontaine, Chief Content Officer for Interactive One gave a great presentation about what Interactive One is doing to provide effective marketing solutions for African American marketing while superserving our community via radio, television, print and online media. It was an excellent presentation and Interactive One has come a long and successful way since it's humble beginnings in Washington DC with Cathy Hughes providing visionary leadership all the while.
• The Advertiser's Perspective: What Clients are Looking For. The summit ended with a presentation featuring key industry perspectives from advertising executives. The panel included senior leaders from industries that continue to struggle with the relevance of online marketing to African Americans despite clear and convincing data that indicates the profit potential for those who get it right. Among the speakers were Don Moore, President of Burrell Digital; Brian Anderson, President Energi; and Sherman Wright, Co-Founder of Commonground Marketing. There was an outstanding exchange on what the giants of search, radio and other industries could learn and where opportunities remain for those who can effectively and convincingly make the case for targeted marketing to our niche. Don's presentation of Burrell's work with American Airlines on Black Atlas was especially enjoyable.

ICEMAN TAKEAWAYS

I drove up to the summit from Indianapolis. The summit began at 9:00 am and I was a few minutes late because I did not plan for rush hour traffic even though I left Indy at 6:30 that morning. Note to self: next time, drive up the night before.

I intended to play it low key, wanting to get a sense of the kinds of professionals in the room and the quality of the content. Both were excellent but again, not quite specific enough to my interests in this niche. There were a number of senior executives from marketing firms along with sales consultants, buyers, publishers, media directors, and designers. These are folks responsible for managing the goals and execution of client campaigns intended to create awareness and drive purchases for their brands. There was great information shared but on an order of magnitude that is more of a case study material for maverick entrepreneurs and less of the brass tacks discussion and demonstration of what works and how to get it done. Again, much respect to Ken Smikle of Target Market News for an outstanding summit.

Calm, Cool, & Connected. Welcome to the Chill Zone.

Losing your head over all the confusion about how to effectively manage your internet presence? Struggling with how to establish an online brand? Looking for tools and technology for improving your personal productivity? You are in the place to be. This is my weblog and this is my passion.

5 Tips for Finding Time for Social Media | Social Media Examiner

I am not going to lie to you. Social media does take time. In fact, time is going to be one of your major hidden costs of doing business on the Internet.  And for some of us, that time could be wasted if we are not careful.

via www.socialmediaexaminer.com

Trying to use social media to promote your business but finding it hard to make time to get it done? Chris Garrett comes to your rescue here with five great tips to turn back the hands of time.

11 Ways to Influence People Online and Make Them Take Action

Influence can be defined as the power exerted over the minds and behavior of others. A power that can affect, persuade and cause changes to someone or something. In order to influence people, you first need to discover what is already influencing them. What makes them tick? What do they care about? We need some leverage to work with when we’re trying to change how people think and behave.

via www.doshdosh.com

Dosh Dosh knows content. The articles on this blog become instant favorites and solid reference material with long-term value. This article is an excellent example of what it means to demonstrate expertise via free material that keeps readers coming back for more.

The lengthy but easy-to-read article includes some of Robert Cialdini's principles of Influence (a must-read if you have not heard of it) along with other great insights that you can immediately use to grow your traffic.

Who Makes More Money – Authors, Bloggers or Internet Marketers? - Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Nowadays most published authors have blogs, and bloggers use Internet marketing techniques and write books too. Internet marketers also publish books and use blogs, so how can we determine the difference?

via www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

You're starting out as an online entrepreneur. You may be an author, you probably have a blog, and you're wondering how you can make $1 million dollars with the internet. Authors, and Bloggers and Marketers, oh my! In this article Yaro tells you how to focus in order to make the big bucks.

Use Twitter Lists to Build Your Personal Brand

via socialmediatoday.com

Social Media Today is a great site for forward thinking and innovative approaches in using social media for brand management. This article focuses on the new Twitter lists feature and discusses how it can be used to further your expertise.

Used Listerine to update http://ping.fm/v1RMw and mistakenly sent the same message several times. Ugh!

DanteLee.com Blog: Can Your Business Be Easily Duplicated?

via www.dantelee.com

As always, great advice from one of my favorite Black business bloggers, Dante Lee. Dante offers five succinct ways to to make sure that you stay on top of your game and keep the competition at bay.

Free WiFi - A 2009-2010 Holiday Gift from Google

When you’re traveling this holiday season, you can enjoy free WiFi at 47 participating airports and on every Virgin America flight. Just bring a WiFi-enabled laptop or mobile device and stay connected to family and friends for free while you travel now through January 15, 2010.

via www.freeholidaywifi.com

Merry Christmas from the Santa Search Giant. I can't imagine what this represents in terms of a revenues equivalent. If you're traveling between now and January 15, 2010, this is great news.

Has the Digital Divide Really Dwindled? http://ping.fm/gUnz7

5 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page | Social Media Examiner

Why Do You Need a Facebook Fan Page? You may ask, “Why do I even need a Facebook fan page?” Here’s why: Facebook currently has an Alexa ranking of 2. They are the second most trafficked website next only to Google!

via www.socialmediaexaminer.com

If you don't try anything but the Facebook search feature as discussed in this article, it will have been well worth the read. The other tips are also quite good.

Will Typepad Micro give status updates like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace a run for the money?

Working on ensuring that Ping.fm effectively updates all my sites with as little work as possible.