Posts Tagged: "Renee C. Quinn"

You have a business, a website and a traditional marketing strategy. But now you have decide to give social media a try. You feel that Facebook would be a good place for you to reach many potential customers within your target audience. But when you go onto Facebook you notice that there are both fan pages and groups available for use by businesses. But how do you decide which is best for your business? In order to answer this question, you must first know what each each, what they offer and what the difference are between the two.

Although Facebook originally discussed the use of facial recognition technology in a small blog post on the site back in December, it was listed as unavailable until earlier this month. The social media giant released its new Autotag facial-recognition tool that will allow users to autotag photos of their friends based on what they look like. But what was most odd about this release is that they did so quietly and under the radar with little thought to the risks that could be associated with the tool. Rather than having the ability to opt-in to this new tool, you have to go into your settings and opt-out. With more than 500 million active users, even if you choose not to be tagged in photos, it is inevitable that you and perhaps even your small children are being tagged by others without your knowledge.

With social media, You Are Your Brand. But what exactly does that mean? If you are part of a larger firm or business, you may be using social media to promote the products and services your company/firm offers, but you are doing so as an individual. Social media is about sharing content and building relationships. The general voice of your company/firm would not work in social media, nor in face to face networking for that matter, without each individual representative of the company displaying their own personalities and adding unique insight which ultimately is what attracts new, potential clients.

LinkedIn announced this week that the professional social networking giant is now valued at $8.79 Billion, roughly 38 times sales figures reported in 2010, after it’s first day as a publicly traded company on May 18. This may be hard to believe by many because LinkedIn has never reported being profitable, nor have they ever made more than $250 million in any one year. However, within minutes of LinkedIn initially offering 7.84 million shares priced at $45, the shares doubled in price and at one point in the day LinkedIn’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) peaked in excess of $122 per share.

Social media has taken the world by storm. Everyone from college students, to politicians, to news media outlets, to business professionals, to small and big businesses, to musicians and artists and other individual people both young and old have jumped on the social media bandwagon. When creating a marketing campaign, no matter what the business is, social media is an obvious choice for those who wish to expand their reach beyond that of the local phone book. Be that as it may, given that social media is still quite new to the business arena, there are still so many opportunities missed because of common yet avoidable mistakes.

Can you honestly say that your firm has more business than it can handle? I would venture a guess that no, it does not. Marketing is so often put on the back burner to everything else that needs to be done. This is especially the case for firms that need to cut their budget. If you cut marketing to save funds in your budget, you will likely need to cut more of your budget down the line. Even if the firm’s table is quite full right now, you must always seek to add new clients to make up for yearly attrition.

In other words, simply making a sale does not mean you are marketing your products and services effectively. Effective marketing is the process by which you promote your firm through the sharing of information with prospective clients about what you have to offer, with the ultimate goal being that a sale is made. Without an effective marketing strategy, you are far less likely to facilitate the sale.

Brand building seems like a rather easy task for companies that offer tangible products, but as attorneys, all you have to sell is your time, so things can be a little bit different. You need to also factor in that in many, if not most, instances clients feel they are represented by an individual. Sure, the firm identity is important, but the relationship is with the individual. Thus, for attorneys it is especially important to always keep in mind that You Are Your Brand! As with any industry, you cannot simply create some ads, a website and some social media profile pages and expect people to come to you. Rather, clear goals need to be outlined and a strategy for reaching those goals should be mapped out.

On Friday March 11, 2011, I attended the Women’s Entrepreneurship Symposium in honor of Women’s History Month at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The program was co-sponsored by the US Women’s Chamber of Commerce and focused on women entrepreneurs, the importance of intellectual property protection for their innovations, how to leverage economic opportunities for women-owned businesses and what resources are available exclusively for women-owned small businesses. The topics discussed focused solely on American business.

The survey assesses the impact of the U.S. economy on global IP strategies for 2011, and is available for free to anyone interested in the results. The survey includes a number of interesting findings, including among these are that 88% of respondents say they were in favor of a European Wide Patent System (which isn’t surprising really), only 19% of respondents said they filed fewer patent application in 2010 (which probably contradicts the convention wisdom of many) and 46% of respondents brought work in house in 2010 (which might not bode well for firms heavily leveraged on work from large corporations).

Brand building can be defined as ‘Building the perceptions of your target audience.’ Those who work in marketing usually say that in order to really build your brand you need to be consistent in your marketing campaigns. Consistency and repetition are a sure way to ingrain your message into the minds of those you are trying to reach by creating a focused brand image. However, Geico, has shown that, when done right, you can break the widely accepted and customary brand building “rules” often having numerous different iconic ad campaigns running at once. So today I’d like to discuss 5 of the more memorable GEICO ad campaigns beginning with the GEICO Gecko® through the most recently added Mike McGlone Commercials and analyze what your business can learn from these ad campaigns.

Social Media has quickly become the fastest growing online phenomenon. Originally Social networking was for college students and artists and musicians, but increasingly businesses of all sizes have jumped on the Social Media bus. Small, medium and large sized business, retail storeowners, politicians, journalistic publications, law firms, chain stores, restaurants and businesses from nearly every industry have chimed in. Whether you have a brick and mortar retail location or are solely online, Social Media can help. But as with any business strategy one can partake in, all of your efforts including, time and money are wasted if you do not know what mistakes you should avoid in order to get the most out of your online efforts.

Staffers worked with us to coordinate the interview with Congressman Chaffetz, which took place earlier today. I was told I would have 15 minutes with the Congressman, and graciously he allowed the interview to go a little long. We talked about the President’s States of the Union address, patent reform, the USPTO budget, innovation generally, manufacturing, job creation, China and more. I think many will find what Congressman Chaffetz has to say quite interesting and very encouraging. I myself found him to be well informed and refreshingly candid.

Over the last two election cycles it has become clear how important it is to have a social media strategy. President Obama masterfully used various Internet and social media communications to ride a wave into office, leaving the Republicans well behind. In the 2010 election cycle the Democrats tended to do quite well on Facebook, but the Republicans gained momentum and did much better on Twitter and enjoyed greater overall “digital energy,” at least according to research conducted by the EmergingMedia Research Council. It is safe to assume that Members of Congress are getting more involved with Social Media, and that trend should only continue to grow in coming years.

About ten months ago I wrote, The Importance of Having a Web Presence where I discussed why you should have a website, where you can buy your domain name and how to find webhosting services. No matter what type of business you have, whether it be a brick and mortar retail location, a consulting business, a law firm or any other type of business, large or small, you need to have a company website if you are to have any real chance of keeping up with the competition. But what makes a successful website? How can you get consumers past the home page? What do you feature on your website? How do you set it up? Whether you are starting from scratch or simply trying to improve the website that you already have, there are key components that every website should possess, eleven of which I will share with you today.