Archive for October 2009

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Kristen Steele photo

Kristen Steele

Small Businesses Are Fans of Facebook

Think Facebook is only for teens, college kids and big name brands with lots of bucks to spare? Think again. This article in the LA Times demonstrates how social media is working for small companies like Sprinkes, the cupcake company in Los Angeles. (They have 70,000 fans!)

The appeal of Facebook does not appear to be ending - or even slowing. According to a Facebook executive, 10 million people become fans of pages (what Facebook calls its company sponsored pages) every day!

Are you on Facebook? Is your company? Why... or more importantly, why not?

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Michael Nott

Worlds Largest News Stand: Magazines Online

In the world of print production technology, most magazines go to press in the form of a PDF document. On the web, that same PDF can be uploaded into an online template so the pages can be flipped and read online. One of the largest sites magazines are being uploaded onto is Issuu.com. Once uploaded into the Issuu site it can be read in their archive or the user can paste the magazine onto their own site.

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Kristen Steele photo

Kristen Steele

The Four Things I Learned from Malcolm Gladwell

When I heard that Malcolm Gladwell was speaking at the email marketing conference I was going to, I was really excited. I really love his books and was intrigued about what he would say to a crowd of 1,300 email marketers.

The ExactTarget conference tagline was "Success by Design," which was perfect for Malcolm to speak about since his recent book is Outliers: The Story of Success.

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Matt Bigelow

What Newspaper Journalists Can Teach You

Amid the financial turmoil plaguing the newspaper industry as a whole, accusations and general finger-pointing has abounded as industry players scramble to figure who's to blame.

You've heard the culprits:

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Laura Pack photo

Laura Pack

Manners in the Workplace

Are you rude at work? Am I?

Etiquette by definition is a show of respect for another. But at work, the lines are often blurred.

I saw this article on CNN and it got me thinking about what’s rude and what’s not. I put my napkin on my lap, say please and thank you (well, most of the time), and keep the cell phone calls to a minimum. But I don’t really mind elbows on the table and can’t remember the last time I said “sir” or “ma’am”.

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Nicole Provonchee photo

Nicole Provonchee

Visually Thinking: A Book Review

As a communicator, I find few things more painful than sitting through a poorly executed presentation where the presenter literally reads his word-overloaded slides to me. Too many people use PowerPoint and too few actually know how to use the tool well. Enter Dan Roam. Dan contends that anyone can be a great communicator by simply taking a more graphic approach to presenting. In his book, The Back of the Napkin, Dan outlines how a few visuals are often more powerful than pages and pages of text. He calls this idea “visual thinking.”

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Matt Southards

How (and why) to plan for interactive marketing

The exponential growth of internet adoption among businesses and consumers provides tremendous opportunity for marketers. According to Forrester Research, advertisers will spend $25.8b on interactive marketing in 2009, and that number is expected to rise over the next five years to $55b, representing 21 percent of all marketing expenditures. The primary reason for this massive growth is that interactive marketing provides more efficient ways to reach prospective customers than more traditional advertising vehicles. Challenges always accompany opportunities, however, and interactive marketing is no exception. Here are five steps to successfully plan your interactive marketing for 2010: 1. Understand. Before you develop and execute your interactive marketing plan, embark on a mission to understand who your target market is and how they behave online. Create a few prototypical customers and create a quick model about the

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Matt Bigelow photo

Matt Bigelow

Business Matters: Nashville Startup Weekend

This past weekend marked my second year attending the caffeine-charged weekend-long blitz that brings together Nashville entrepreneurial types from technology, marketing, business development, law, etc., who pair off into teams and try to launch a business over the weekend.

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Nicole Provonchee photo

Nicole Provonchee

Social Media: The Minimum You Should Do

While social media may appear to be ubiquitous (especially to those of us in the industry), a quick scan of usage numbers indicates there are still a large number of people on the sidelines. In the U.S., Facebook claims roughly 60 million users, LinkedIn estimates it has 21 million accounts and estimates place Twitter’s users at close to 12 million. In a country with almost 250 million people over the age of 18, that leaves a lot of room for growth.

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Lauren Margolis

Insights from an Intern

I have had several internships over the years, and have realized they are excellent opportunities for various reasons: I have been able to explore a new career, gain experience and skills in the publication industry, and make important network connections I can utilize in the future. Overall, I feel as though I have been part of a unique situation in which I have contributed to an organization and walked away with valuable knowledge for the future. If I were to offer advice to any intern before he or she dives right into the position, I would say remember these key points for the first day:

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