Parthenon Post

In business, silence wrecks relationships. Are you talking?

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When it comes to employees, customers and members, mum is not the word. Why you should get strategic with your internal and external messages.

Communication is at the heart of building business relationships: top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, peer-to-peer, internally and externally. The best relationships are two-way with active dialogue. You can have a solid plan and vision, employees with phenomenal capacity and business integrity – but not communicating to your employees, customers and members can be toxic.

Is it Time to Redesign Your Magazine?

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Tip: Don’t Expect Your Readers to Tell You

Publication redesigns should be done in order to better serve readers, but you can’t expect readers to realize it’s time for that change. That is the role of the publishing team — to identify reader needs, then lead them through an engaging publication that meets those needs and even addresses a few they may not know they have. That is part of the art of creating a great publication.

Stock Art 101

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Stock art can be a lifesaver if you ever find yourself needing to add photos to a brochure, but lacking the budget to arrange a professional photo shoot. As the Web has grown, so have the number of stock art websites, so marketers have a wealth of choices when they are seeking art to enhance a marketing piece. But, there are limits to stock art. The article below answers a few of the most common questions we receive about stock art.

Facebook Is Not a Strategy

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Social media is different, but should be utilized with the same thoughtfulness as traditional media

With Facebook topping 200 million active users, and traditional media outlets bombarding viewers with pleas to become fans, many marketers are feeling the pressure to jump on the bandwagon. While Facebook and other social media are new outlets to many, like more traditional media, they require a strategy to be utilized effectively.

Before setting up a Facebook page and expecting thousands of fans to act as your cheerleaders, it is important to answer many of the questions you would in approaching any other media.

Social Media Marketing Today

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New report highlights how marketers are using social media

A new survey from marketing and writing expert Michael Stelzner reports that Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook are the top four social media tools used by marketers — with Twitter in first place. Nine hundred marketing professionals participated in the Social Media Marketing Industry report.

Why did you pick up that magazine, anyway?

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The art of crafting engaging covers

While custom magazines don’t typically compete with other titles on the newsstand, employing tactics by those that stand out among hundreds of other titles can make a big difference in readership. Why? No matter where or how your publication is distributed, the competition is still fierce for your readers’ time and attention. Regardless of whether a magazine is for sale, mailed or simply competing for a flip-through at the doctor’s office, cover design comes down to one imperative goal: grab attention.

2009 Industry Forecast

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Have you noticed that magazines are losing weight? It’s not your imagination — magazines are facing the same problems afflicting the rest of the media business: less revenue, dwindling readership and a rapid-fire digital world that makes weeklies and monthlies alike seem like old news.

5 Elements That Make or Break Your Email

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No matter how brilliant the message you created, it is likely that less than half of your email recipients will actually open it. With those odds, you need an attention-getting strategy.

Email inboxes are more crowded than ever, so be sure your email stands out among all the others. Emails need to be succinct and compelling every step of the way. Even worse than being ignored, is being pegged as spam, since you won't get any future messages through.

Tackling the Mobile Community Through Email

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More and more people are checking their email on BlackBerrys, iPhones and other mobile devices. Like the automobile and television set before them, smartphones will likely become more popular and affordable until almost everyone has one. The question on many marketers' minds: how is the mobile trend affecting our business and marketing emails?

Display Copy Tricks & Tips

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That sigh of relief when an article is done can easily morph into a case of writer’s block when it’s time to come up with a headline. So a lot of people just throw something together, forgetting to put the same care and effort into headlines, subheads and pull quotes that they do when crafting a story. But readers use those elements to decide whether they will actually take the time to read the full story.

So how do you fashion a headline and subhead that draws the reader in? How do you pull out ideas or quotes from an article that make the person skimming through pages stop and read every word?

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