File this one under “Who Knew?” So not only do those slow, wack, duct tapped together websites that take forever to load make you roll your eyes when you stumble across them, but they may even be causing you stress and agitation.  According to what may be perhaps the goofiest study I have yet to find online, busted websites could be potentially dangerous.  A devoted team of volunteers at Foviance in the UK subjected more…

To some, the word “newsletter” conjures up images of a badly photocopied, multi-colored paper affair that is often seen at schools or community centers. These things have been around since the dawn of time and as long as there’s a bake sale or a fund raising bingo game, newsletters are not going anywhere. To others, the newsletter has morphed into a way to correspond with clients via email in an easy to read format that can be dangerously dry in tone. Surviving the social media blitz as well as more…

The Patient: Merriam–Webster, America’s go-to guy for dictionaries and thesauruses since 1828.

The Ailment: Merriam Webster suffers from a jumbled online presence and a scattered social media strategy that undercuts their fantastic line of products.

Prognosis: Hopeful. With a strict streamlining of the website, an aggressive public relations plan, and clear vision for social media, Merriam-Webster should remain the country’s premiere reference guru for another century or two.

Recommended Treatment: The worn out red Webster’s dictionary has long lived on the shelves of students. Everybody knows the brand and it’s omnipresence is so ingrained that it would be safe to assume that the brand is fine and not going anywhere anytime soon, right? Wrong. If the recent  shake ups at long standing publishers like  Rand McNally has taught more…

It’s been another exciting week in the world of all things Google. The little search engine with the unassuming primary colored logo has generated more headlines recently than American Idol and Obama combined. Let’s take a look at what the world’s most popular website has been up to.

Just yesterday, Google threw their hat back into the social media arena with the launch of Buzz. Google promises that Buzz will be the faster and easier way to share pictures and videos with friends and family who already belong to Gmail. Naturally Buzz is instantly compatible with smart phones and employs the latest in GPS location to gather information from neighboring businesses and hot spots. Its a gutsy move considering that Google has failed to nab the social marketing scene like Facebook has. From a marketing standpoint, Buzz could provide some much needed oomph to the social media marketing game. Buzz’s new features and Google-like accessability are appealing and send the mind reeling into more…

Who could resist a purposely lame 1980’s style video game that features a purple unicorn and his Fabio lookalike master who are in search of floating cheese puffs while attending a birthday party thrown by puppies? Maybe lots of people, but a certain writer could not. In fact, the aforementioned writer  just spent a little too much time playing Cheeto’s Legend of the Cheetocorn.  The quirky and dumb video game is  little more an elaborate advertisement for Cheetos, yet it possesses a certain “what the hell” factor that makes you take a second look.

In fact, take a gander at the hot articles on Digg, for example. The majority of them have a certain wacky or unique appeal that begs readers to stop and click. Everything from stories about women with multiple body parts to the obligatory goofy animal articles are more…

When Katie Couric took over as anchor of The CBS Evening News in 2006, media watchers lined up with bats to take a whack at her like she was some sacrificial journalism pinata. The former Today show host was always thought to be too perky, too eager, and not evening news material.  Her arrival at CBS was highly hyped and endlessly promoted while Couric’s salary was rumored to be astronomical. The overwhelming consensus after two months, however, was that CBS had made a big mistake. Her ratings were awful and the reviews were unkind to say the least. So how does a television whipping post like Katie Couric wind up winning the Edward R Murrow Award for best newscast in both 2008 and 2009? Tracking the anchor’s phoenix-like rise from the ashes is valuable seminar in new media marketing, technological innovation, and good old fashioned “never give up” persistence.

Katie Couric’s morning show fan base always admired her happy-go-lucky and friendly demeanor yet this persona simply would not fly in a nightly news format where anchors are expected to be stoic like Walter Cronkite. Instead of abandoning the personality that put her on the map, the newswoman struck gold at the 2008 Democratic National Convention with original web content that featured a relaxed Couric who could be seen clowning with crew members, ribbing politicians, and offering personal insights into the event’s goings on. The popularity of the coverage lead to the creation of @katiecouric, an online news program that allowed her to let her hair down and be the Katie viewers fell in love with. The show features a looser format, frank talk and opinions, and most importantly, original content not to be found anywhere else. This week the show featured a blow by blow of the President’s first State of the Union address.

With @katiecouric, the anchor was reinventing CBS’ longstanding reputation as, ” the old people’s channel” and the makeover didn’t stop there. Couric tapped into the social media craze by supplying more original content on her Facebook and Twitter accounts. Daily updated, her social media sites promote The CBS Evening News as well as her original web content.  Moreover, she communicates directly with her viewers by asking them to send in questions for interviews, suggestions for stories, and photos from news making events.

The most important thing any struggling business can learn from Katie Couric is to never give up. Instead of quitting and opting out of her big bucks contract, Couric rolled up her sleeves and got creative.  When she famously grilled what’s-her-name from Alaska, Katie asked the questions that were on her viewers minds without apology or cynicism. The interview, in turn, has become one of the most famous political train wrecks of all time while the interviewer gained respectability for staying true to who she is.  Producing webcasts, diving into social media marketing, and tapping into your own marketable identity are tasks that virtually everyone can do. So the next time your scratching your head to come up with a new marketing plan ask yourself, “What would Katie Couric do?”

Art programs in public schools are facing near extinction. The funds to teach painting, ceramics, music, and theater are non-existent and the public perception is that these skills are not as important as reading or math, even though research has proven time and time again that students who study art score higher on standardized tests.
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As readership at Vogue is slipping and Project Runway is trying to limp back after the critical beating it took over the summer,  the future was looking bleak for fashionistas worldwide.  Furthering cause for panic,  dozens of small boutiques and brands have failed to survive against lower priced stores like Target.  Not missing a beat, though, the ever resourceful fashion biz has created new ways to reach out to their clients using online brand marketing.

Swedish clothing company and purveyors of chic, affordable looks H&M has found a way to bring Fashion Week to the masses. Using slick video episodes, H&M speaks directly to their style hungry clients and fans every week with new content that spans the globe from Paris to New York.  Levi’s website also produces interactive videos as well as the blog Denim Therapy written by jean obsessed fashion gurus. Strictly for the style and Sex and the City obsessed, Patriciafield.com offers not only a first hand look into the famed stylist’s brand and boutique but her blog shows the beautiful people of New York looking fabulous. Rustyzipper.com, a longtime seller of vintage looks, updates loyal customers with new thrift arrivals via email and text messages.  Finally, luxury brand Gucci has developed their own iPhone application to bring their latest products and locations of store openings right to the tips of their customer’s flawlessly manicured fingertips.

Yet even the smallest clothing designer can get the word out online without the mega bucks of Gucci or Levi’s. Video casting indie fashion shows, smartly written fashion blogs, and mobile updates are easy and affordable things nearly every small company can do to stay in touch with their customers. So what new marketing techniques are you going to use in 2010 to keep your products in fashion?

The train wreck in slow motion that is the NBC finally came to a head this week as Jay Leno’s prime time experiment was yanked from the network’s schedule. While the falling axe on Leno was known to be coming from media watchers for weeks, what happened next can only be described as shocking. In an effort to fill holes in their Swiss-cheese like schedule, The Peacock hoped to move Leno after the news in a half hour format while pushing the time slots of both the Tonight Show and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon back another half an hour. On Tuesday, Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien politely issued a “thanks, but no thanks” statement to the networks proposal. O’Brien stated that to toy with the Tonight Show name and reputation was a bad idea. NBC is back at square one and scrambling for yet another plan b.

This colossal mess, like most messes, contains some excellent lessons. For starters, O’Brien was dead on when he rejected a timeslot change for the Tonight Show. For forty years, The Tonight Show has occupied the same cozy little broadcast time located right after the news and right before bed. To change this would be dangerous especially for a network that seems to be coming closer to going out of business every day. Online marketing for small businesses can be put in the same predicament as NBC by toying with already successful strategies. If a strong emphasis has been placed on social networking to get the brand’s name out, for example, then it is vital to keep up with the schedule, staffing and budget issues be damned. In short, NBC attempted to violate the age old wisdom of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Also, the network stumbled by wrongly assuming that viewers wanted three hours of the same type of program. NBC stopped listening to their audience and stopped evolving. Time and time again in this climate we’ve seen businesses make the same mistakes with marketing. This can be avoided by branching out in new online marketing techniques that will help expand the brand while avoiding complacency.

Finally, the biggest lesson that NBC can teach businesses of all sizes is that a lack of identity can be fatal. Since the post-Friends era NBC has been struggling to find their own persoanlity. Are they the network known for sports? Are they the network known for cop shows at 10pm? Are they the home of more Jay Leno than anybody ever wanted? Who knows. And this is a big problem. Small companies without the giant corporate parachute that NBC has quickly disappear from the radar if they don’t truly know who they are. Constant care and creativity need to be utilized in order to secure a brand’s identity. Employing a “leave no stone unturned” philosophy while presenting a strong, consistent image gives consumers the message that your business is stable yet evolving to the client’s ever changing needs.

While there is little doubt that late night talk shows will go the way of the dinosaur any time soon, the rest of us can take NBC’s mistakes to heart and learn from them. Being too comfortable, too cocky or too confused in online marketing is a luxury most businesses just don’t have.

If you’re a savvy digital marketer, it’s not enough to have a great website. That’s a given. The name of the game today is expanding your reach beyond your main site. If you start to think of your main site as a hub, and other digital assets like Facebook fan pages, blogs, email campaigns, etc. as spokes or offshoots from the hub, then you’re on the right track. Like a spoke, the additional digital property should be robust enough to support the hub, or your main site. The more spokes you have, the more marketing muscle. If you think of it, digital assets like Facebook and Twitter can cross-over in many areas thus offering a double-whammie. For example, you can automatically send your tweets to your Facebook fan site to keep your fans in the loop. You can also take content like blog entries and post them on your facebook site. In effect, your spokes are can and should cross each other to add support to your hub. Why do this? Here are a couple of reasons:

1) Multiple Entry Points. Some people are on Facebook all day long and consider Twitter a waste of time. The converse is true too. So why limit yourself to one or the other? By spreading your content across multiple platforms, you make it easier for people to interact with your brand.

2) Spreadable Content. If you have a great blog post, why not share it with your closest followers on Twitter or Facebook. Be careful though, you don’t want to bombard your friends with shameless self promotion. As long as your content is good enough, people will be open to a link to your blog. So spread away.

3) Cross-Promote. Let’s say you just created a great YouTube video about the latest widget your company just created on a shoe string budget. Why just use the YouTube platform to promote it? Announcing your opus on Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc., may expose your video to an entirely new audience that would have never come across it. It’s a no brainer.

Having your content spread across multiple platforms can help SEO and can make it easier for people to find you. It can also establish a lasting digital footprint across the web and on search engines. As long as you are creating killer content, why not roll it out in more than one way. Get it? Roll it out. Wheel. Never mind.