A show of hands for all those who set up a Google Plus business account and didn’t do anything with it. (Mine is up.)  But I just read Guy Kawasaki’s new book, “What the Plus!”, and it’s made me want to rethink my stand (or lack of one) on Google Plus for business.

Maybe I was too quick to proclaim with the rest of em: Google Plus dead!  For months people have been calling Google Plus a “ghost town” or “the graveyard of social media.”  But that graveyard appears to be growing.  As of March 2012, Google+ topped over 100 million active users.  100 million active users in over 9 months.  It’s not Pinterest-style growth, but it’s pretty impressive.

And Kawasaki makes a pretty persuasive argument. Read More…..

The question on everyone’s minds: does more time spent on social media mean a greater social ROI?  That is one of the questions Social Media Examiner tries to answer in its 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.  They surveyed 3300 fellow marketers to find insights on how marketers are using social media to grow their company.  Companies are becoming more social and staying on top of using Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, blogs, and other channels takes commitment.  Maintaining a well run social media machine takes time but exactly how much time and what are the benefits? Read More…..

14 days and counting until the Facebook Timeline takes effect. Don’t freak out! Facebook timeline for business pages isn’t as bad as you think. You just have to think a little differently now. Here are the basics:

1. Think History

I know many of you businesses love that history wall you’ve created in your office. Showing off your accomplishments and milestones. Now you can translate that into the facebook experience. Significant posts become those pinpoints on your wall. Keep that in mind when you’re planning your posts. The newsfeed provides a new type of “milestone” post that will be added to the brand timeline. Read More…..

Nowadays, the smart marketers are all talking about “multi-channel marketing.” If you’re new to this term, it means marketing using more than one channel, usually combining traditional and digital marketing channels.  In the context of online marketing, multi-channel marketing means marketing through a combination of online channels, like email, social media, mobile and search.

But how do you effectively market across multiple online channels? A recent column by Shelly Alavarez at MarketingLand.com sheds some light on this. Alvarez suggests that marketers can’t expect to be successful across multiple channels if their customers aren’t ‘cross-informed’. In short, if you want to achieve multi-channel marketing success, start sharing common messages to your consumers across the board, as opposed to different messages for each platform. Read More…..

Most startups face a similar dilemma. They need to attract attention but the right sort of attention. Back in the care free days of the last internet boom a few dot coms attacked this problem by purchasing ads for the one television broadcast they could be sure their customer was watching – the Super Bowl. During Super Bowl XXXIV, over a dozen startups including Computer.com, Epidemic.com and OurBeginning.com spent at total of $40 million for ads like this:

Ads like the one for Computers.com attracted attention alright, but mostly in the form of ridicule. One company, Pets.com, promoted a sock puppet in an expensive spot during the 2000 Super Bowl which, after millions more dollars of advertising later, was sold for $125,000 in bankruptcy court (and can still seen today as the Bar None loan spoke sock).

Today in 2012, with the rack rate for 30 seconds over Lucas Oil Stadium listing at $3.5 million this approach would seem an extensive luxury for even the most well backed new venture and in my estimation would just be another tremendous waste of money.

Social media, which is often free, and on-line media which is often next to free would seem the answer. The dilemma is to be successful requires both patience and diligence. Feast or famine, with all the things on the entrepreneurial plate getting around to creating a blog post, tweeting, or Facebooking is often the last thing that gets done. This is unfortunate since most new ventures and especially ones with solve new or complex business problems this is their most effective go-to-market strategy and dollar-for-dollar their best marketing spend.