Friday, January 21, 2011

The Creative Corner: Thinking Outside the Box

Play the "What If" game. Magic happens when you play the "What If" game with questions like "What if animals could really talk?" "What if asphalt was color-coded blue or red for a speed limit? Would we call them 'blue tops', and 'red tops'?" "What if men got pregnant like seahorses?" Playing this game can take you on a journey to new ideas. What crazy "What If" question can you ask yourself about your idea?

Things That Make You Say, "Hmm"....

U.S. tax dollars at work.

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I'd like a normal man toilet please.

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Put your tin can in, pull your tin can out, 
put your tin can in, then shake it all about...


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Must be a convenient service for mafia members.

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Rock solid advice.



In the News

Who Said We Are Rational?
An obesity crisis is upon us and the solutions have proven to be stubborn. The most popular government policy proposals have been rooted in the assumption that humans will make self-interested choices in the face of well-designed incentives. That is to say, that we’ll be rational. Selectively imposed taxes, nutritional labeling, and improved access to fresh produce are just three ways that Federal and state governments have—through faith in reason—worked to lure our palates away from the excessive consumption of junk food. By no means have all these efforts failed, but 68 percent of Americans are still overweight or obese. This figure shows no sign of retreat.

Arrest your Audience
No, not with handcuffs and a badge, but with simple, compelling images—the critical first step en route to engagement. The most well-crafted message will go to waste unless the audience is delayed long enough to at least consider one key selling point. The image of an elephant riding a wave on a surfboard is as preposterous as a flying pig. Yet we never fail to notice these exercises in creativity.

Gold Vending Machines Land In Las Vegas
Another unique and creative venture is the installment of gold vending machines in Las Vegas. At JCK 2010, the jewelry industry’s premiere trade event, the Hon group from Seoul, South Korea, introduced the Gold Rush Kiosk. The Kiosk is a 42-inch touch screen machine that lets customers purchase solid 24K gold bar cards of their preferred weight and size using cash or credit card. Bars are available in six weights, 0.5g/ 1.0g/ 2.0g/ 3.0g/ 5.0g/ 10.0g and will be available for purchase inside of Las Vegas Hotels, casinos, cruise lines, airports, malls, department stores and jewelry stores. Customers can select and alter the design on the card and also create personalized messages and the kiosk comes equipped with a shipping function. Prices for the gold bar cards vary with the global market price of gold. The Hon Group hopes to repeat the successes of this unique idea here as they did in South Korea.

A Unique Brand Opportunity
What if I told you about a platform even less cluttered by brands than the iPad’s section of the App Store and that is selling units at 160,000 a day -- more than four times as fast as the iPad...would you be interested in its future? You’d be super excited, right? Well marketers, meet Android. Google has really done an amazing job with Android. When it was first released, it was a pretty poor comparison to the iPhone. In a little under two years from launch, it’s become a very serious competitor to Apple. Despite its commercial success in the market (HTC saw a 63 percent increase in sales from Q2 2009 to Q2 2010), marketers have been slow to embrace the platform. Right now, Android’s Market is about as vacant of brand presence as the App Store was a year and a half ago. Note to marketers: Avoid the competition and get in now, while the gettin’ is good.

Cybersuperweapons
Computer viruses that steal identities are nothing new. But 2010 introduced the world to something potentially far more dangerous: Stuxnet. Stuxnet is the world’s first publicly known cybersuperweapon— a computer program that is able to cross the digital divide and destroy a real-world target. The first target? An Iranian nuclear facilities. But future variants could be used to hammer US critical infrastructure, too, the Congressional Research Service warned in December. Stuxnet was designed to control and destroy industrial control systems and could be activated by merely plugging a thumb drive loaded with the weapon into the target’s computer system. It "threatens to cause harm to many activities deemed critical to the basic functioning of modern society," the Congressional Reseach Service reported Dec. 9.

Talking it up, Facebook Style...What's Really Being Said?

Facebook recently examined how status updates are worded and what this says about the user. The following is what they found.

Younger people: Are more apt to express negative emotions such as anger as well as swear more. They talk about themselves and use such pronouns as "I" or "my" more often. They talk more about school.

Older people: Write longer updates and gravitate towards standard English, using prepositions and articles. They also talk more about their families and other people.

Popular people: Use the pronoun "you" more as well as other second person pronouns. Write longer updates and talk about sports and music. They stay away from talk about their families and are less emotional overall. They use fewer past tense verbs as well as words related to time.

Time of day: People tend to talk about what they are (or should be) doing at a particular time of day. People talk about sleep more at night, with such comments peaking at 4 am ET. Talk about work or school is higher in the morning. Comments about social or leisure activities increase as the day goes on.

Positive/negative words: People use positive emotional words more in the morning. As the day wears on the words become more negative. Status updates with positive emotional words receive more "likes"; those with negative emotional words receive less "likes". Positive emotional updates receive fewer comments while negative emotional updates receive more comments.

Miscellaneous: People tend to "like" a religious comment rather than comment on it. There is a correlation between how much a person uses certain words, and how much his or her friends do. Status updates that use lots of pronouns receive more of both types of feedback. The one word category that correlates most negatively with both "likes" and comments? "Sleep."

2 Ways to Blog with Purpose!

Blogging has grown steadily over the past five years and it appears from the historical data it's going to be a terrific business to start.  From 2011 to 2012 the amount of WordPress posts grew over 50% from 177 million to 352 million.    
bizXpress
As the history suggests, we can project the 2014 trends will surpass more than 500 Million WordPress posts (and this doesn't count the other blog hosts). That's tremendous growth and provides you as a blogger with a tremendous opportunity to capture a piece of this growing market.
- See more at: http://www.business-ideas-connection.com/blogging-trends.html#sthash.9j2y9i82.dpuf
Updated 12/01/14

Blogging has grown significantly in the last five years and has become a great content marketing tool for businesses. In fact, WordPress reports that more than 409 million people view more than 17.4 billion pages each month. (https://wordpress.com/activity/)

Numbers don't lie. As of early 2011, there were around 156 million public blogs in existence. (Credit: "BlogPulse". The Nielsen Company. February 16, 2011.) That number grew to 172 million on Tumblr and 75.8 million WordPress blogs in 2014 according to their own stats respectively. While Blogger is the most popular blogging service used today, it does not offer public statistics.
Blogging has grown steadily over the past five years and it appears from the historical data it's going to be a terrific business to start.  From 2011 to 2012 the amount of WordPress posts grew over 50% from 177 million to 352 million.    
bizXpress
As the history suggests, we can project the 2014 trends will surpass more than 500 Million WordPress posts (and this doesn't count the other blog hosts). That's tremendous growth and provides you as a blogger with a tremendous opportunity to capture a piece of this growing market.
- See more at: http://www.business-ideas-connection.com/blogging-trends.html#sthash.9j2y9i82.dpuf
Blogging has grown steadily over the past five years and it appears from the historical data it's going to be a terrific business to start.  From 2011 to 2012 the amount of WordPress posts grew over 50% from 177 million to 352 million.    
bizXpress
As the history suggests, we can project the 2014 trends will surpass more than 500 Million WordPress posts (and this doesn't count the other blog hosts). That's tremendous growth and provides you as a blogger with a tremendous opportunity to capture a piece of this growing market.
- See more at: http://www.business-ideas-connection.com/blogging-trends.html#sthash.9j2y9i82.dpuf

Many brands perceive blogs to have the highest value of any social media in driving site traffic, brand awareness, lead generation and sales—as well as improving overall customer service. As your business puts more resources into this form of marketing, the following 2 tips will be of value to you.

  1. Create an editorial schedule. This will help you stay smart about content and help keep your writers on track and will most likely meet customer and business needs, giving an element of predictability to your readers. For example: Mondays might focus on a message from the CEO or other business leaders. (If they don’t have time to write it, interview them over the phone and write it for them.) Tuesdays and Thursdays can be wildcards or days where you don’t post at all. Wednesdays might be for helpful tips posted about your product or service. Fridays might be a news roundup for the week. Other suggestions could include interviews and guest posts (from internal sources, marketing partners, customers, etc.).
  2. Encourage yourself with the following. Business blogs that have at least 11 articles posted will generate an average of three leads. Blogs that reach the 12-23 threshold rise to ten leads. Blogs with 24-51 articles generate an average of 13 leads, and blogs with 52 posted articles generate an average of 23 leads according to Hubspot. This represents a 77% lead growth, more than twice the 30% lead growth that occurs when the number of posted blog articles reaches 24. If these stats hold true you’ll be on your way in no time to generating significant brand growth.


10 Tips for Better Synergy Between E-mail & Social Media Campaigns

Remember, even if it’s the same customer, they have different expectations from e-mail and social media. In very general terms, e-mail is a great way to blast out a short message indicating a sale, or offering a coupon, or offering a chance to sign up for something or a newsletter. All of these ideas are extremely effective when they are purposeful.

Social media, by contrast, is more innovative and flexible. Brands have the ability to experiment more. In short, brands should not repurpose the same message in e-mail and social media—consumers will get bored and unsubscribe. However, in some cases, content can be shared but usually in different forms. So how do I integrate the two? Glad you asked. Below are a few tips.

  1. Promote Facebook games, applications, and competitions in e-mail and on Twitter.
  2. Feature winners of Facebook competitions in your e-mail newsletter.
  3. Tweet about exclusive content that’s only available to e-mail subscribers.
  4. Promote exclusive deals on Facebook and Twitter, but make it only available to e-mail subscribers.
  5. Post links to web versions of your best e-mails on Facebook and Twitter.
  6. Include "Like" and "Follow" buttons in e-mail newsletters and promotions.
  7. Include links to your Twitter and Facebook pages in e-mail newsletters.
  8. Collect e-mail addresses at the point of conversion for consumers who link to your site from Facebook and Twitter.
  9. Include questions posted on Twitter and Facebook in your e-mails, and then answer them.
  10. Encourage e-mail subscribers to post questions on Facebook and/or Twitter.



3 Ways to Get More Facebook Fans and Keep 'Em

Nowadays getting and keeping your Facebook fans is extremely important for your brand. Not so you can brag about how many "fans" you have, but to utilize this connection to maximize your brand's future growth possibilities. Below are three ways you can do just that.
  1. Build awareness: Market your Facebook page every chance you get through your website’s landing pages, your e-mail communications, and your online and offline advertising. Note: One small Facebook icon at the bottom of your website doesn’t cut it anymore. Bottomline? Integrate a Facebook call-to-action into your marketing communications plan.
  2. Convert your traffic (from visitors to fans): The Facebook "wall" is the default landing spot for all Facebook pages. If this is all your brand creates you will be missing a huge branding opportunity to convert your visitors to fans. Facebook allows a page administrator to designate alternative landing tabs ("Welcome" pages, etc.) for new visitors. This is your best opportunity to maximize and convert your visitors. Your new Facebook "Welcome" page should welcome new visitors and give them a clearly defined call-to-action to become a fan. This can be a simple or complicated page. Some brands offer exclusive content when you become a fan, and others promote a contest or sweepstakes. And some manage to do it all. Whatever the case, always clearly communicated your brand’s benefits.
  3. Engage your fans and they will engage your brand: Easier said than done, right? RIGHT! But, start here: Listen to your fan. Serve content your fans want. Simply regurgitating existing content and reposting on Facebook offers no reason for your fans to engage. Include discussion boards, notes, stories, photos, questions, videos, reviews, events, and/or custom applications and tabs, etc. Facebook can deliver a huge amount of customer interaction with your brand. If you want your fans to engage, ask for their opinions. Post questions, run surveys, etc. And remember, every time a fan responds to or "likes" your post, that information is shared with their friends. This is where the amazing reach of Facebook comes into play.

 Focus on your fans and potential fans by offering engaging content that matters most to them and you’ll begin to build a solid and effective brand communications platform that you can leverage time and again.



Letter from the Editor: Embrace the 800 lb. Gorilla

Huge predictions are being made for the growth of social media this year. For example, Experian Hitwise ranked Facebook the top-searched term overall out of 1,000 search terms analyzed for 2010. This is the second year that the social networking website has been the top search term overall, accounting for 2.11 percent of all searches. The term "facebook login" moved up from the 9th spot in 2009 to the second spot in 2010. YouTube was the third most-searched term in 2010, followed by craigslist. Social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 4.18 percent of the top 50 searches. This is a trend, not a fad.

Let's start the new year out right and put the grand focus on the "800 lb. gorilla in the room." Whether you are just now dipping your toes into the dark rising water or riding the soon to be tsunami, hopefully, you'll find a few interesting and helpful articles on the subject in this quarter's SweetSpot.

As you probably know already, diving into or staying on top of the social media craze is NOT a substitute for doing your business through personal relationships, offering a stellar product and delivering exemplary customer service. It's always about people, listening, and value. After all, that's the foundation of every great brand. However, remember, without the added benefit of social media direction and implementation, your brand could face diminished returns.

So, if you’re already "in"...go deeper...and if you’re not already "in"...your dead. No, not really. Just a little behind, but don’t worry it’s not too late, yet...just get “in” fast before you miss all the fun. Call us if you need help with the integration.

Looking forward to a great new year and as always wishing you the very best in building your brand to new heights.

Best,

Chris Hornsby