http://flic.kr/p/86P7Yw Forty years ago, engineer Ray Tomlinson sent the first electronic mail message. No one remembers now what the message said, only that it was short and difficult to compose. But whatever it said, it changed the communications picture forever. When he showed his work to a colleague, he was told firmly, “Don’t go telling anyone! […]
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Employee Training: Step One in Preparing for a Social Media Crisis
A couple of weeks ago, lawyers from up and down the Atlantic coast of the U.S. gathered at the Marriott Marquis in New York’s Times Square for the 23rd Annual Corporate Counsel Conference. Like attorneys everywhere, the corporate lawyers gathered in New York were eager to learn more about how to handle what most believe […]
Drawing the Line Between Personal and Professional
Over the past week, thousands of new readers have visited this blog in response to an article on regulation and compliance in social media. So The Distributed Marketing Blog is happy to announce a free webinar on July 14 that will help further explore the emerging need to divide personal and professional use of digital and social […]
Who Owns Your Linked In Profile?
Compliance is good, right? So there shouldn’t be any controversy about a new tool that enables compliance. So far, there hasn’t been much resistance to corporate social media policies or to the use of monitoring tools for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites. On Wednesday, however, a press release from compliance software vendor Actiance […]
Survey Says: Familiarity, Ease-of-use, and Cost Trump “Cool” for Marketers
Familiarity, ease-of-use, and cost trump “cool” when marketers decide which communications channel to use. That’s the take-away from a recent survey which looks at some of the factors that weigh into a marketer’s decision on which communications channel to use. Pity the poor marketer who has to decide how to make the best use of time, money, […]
What Channels Deliver the Best Results?
In the first quarter of 2011, Gleanster conducted the Multi-Channel Marketing Management Survey in which CMO’s were asked to select the two most effective communications channels. Traditional marketing tools beat out newer tools by a wide margin. Why? The survey report concludes that one of the major reasons is that most companies have not yet invested the […]
A Casket Salesman’s Lesson on Infrequent Customer Loyalty
Brand marketers invest billions creating an emotional connection between their brand and prospective or current customers. In fast food, packaged goods, entertainment, fashion, automotive marketing and many other industries, brand loyalty is the Holy Grail for marketing. For any distributed marketing organization – companies who rely on franchise networks, VARs, dealers, agents, or chain store […]
Can multi-channel automation shorten your sales cycle?
Long, long ago, in a business model that has now been relegated to the history texts, lead generation meant finding the name, address, and phone number of someone who could be added to a mailing list, or identifying a homeowner who would open the door to a salesman. Once you had the name and address, […]
Memorial Day: Remembering the Heroes
Today is Memorial Day in the U.S., a time to remember those who fought and died so that bloggers, social media users, and ordinary people could “have their say” online and everywhere else. That’s really all there is to say today, except a heartfelt thank you to the heroes of yesterday and today, known […]
Please Don’t Feed the Trolls
There are two kinds of trolls on the Internet — and that’s if you discount the ones in the role-playing and Sci-Fi sites. As a marketer, you’ll want to avoid feeding both breeds. The first species that threatens online marketers is the copyright troll. These are law firms who license the right to sue from copyright […]
Risky business – or manageable risk?
An interesting question was asked recently during a webinar titled Marketing & Compliance in a Regulated Environment (presentation download — recorded webinar — Q&A). The two-part question came up after one of the panelists said that companies in a regulated environment should “vet” links and comments. The first question was: What do you mean by “vetting” […]
If Words Have Two Meanings
“There’s a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure ‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings…” –Copyright, 1970, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Stairway to Heaven When words have two meanings it can lead to a hit song — or a compliance nightmare. Marketing people tend to like words. And, as […]