Creating a new way to Twitter for your business.

The “Contributors” feature from your friends at Twitter, currently in beta testing, will enable your company to have multiple contributors to its Twitter feed. Each Tweet will include the writer’s byline. In addition, “Contributors” promises two different levels of access: Enhanced and Partial.

Enhanced Access will allow contributors to view the account dashboard and it may include data and analytics about your Twitter feed, followers, etc. Partial Access allows them to write Tweets but not see the entire dashboard. Other business-specific features are in development as Twitter makes a concerted effort to address business needs. How will this change the Twitter game? Watch and see for yourself.

Dashboards can help drive marketing strategy.

Looking for an easy way to gauge your client’s driving forces? Ask what’s on his or her dashboard.

Dashboards are a businessperson’s CliffsNotes®, condensing tomes of information into readily digestible nuggets. Where do overall profits stand? Any new leads from the northeast territory? Is maternity patient volume up? Dashboards provide a snapshot of the key metrics your client needs to succeed.

Which brings us, as usual, to marketing strategy. Knowing what’s on a client’s dashboard enables you to customize a plan that speaks to his or her exact needs and goals. And that’s a plan you can get some serious mileage from.

Changing the way they advertise.

Everyone wants to reach the top. Mountain climbers have always set their sights on conquering Mt. Everest. Baseball players have always aimed for the World Series. Big companies have always budgeted to advertise during the Super Bowl.

Until now. Pepsi is ending its 23-year run as an advertising staple during the most watched television event of the year. According to the Wall Street Journal, the soft-drink powerhouse is moving its advertising dollars online to kick off the “Pepsi Refresh Project” that will “award grant money for community projects proposed and selected by consumers, such as helping high-school students publish books to develop their writing skills.”Read full post...

Take a break for the holidays!

The holiday season may seem a little less jolly for some of us this year. Stress levels are high and there are plenty of reasons to feel a bit like a scrooge — lousy economy, job pressures, family needs, etc. It doesn’t help that we’re constantly receiving or sending electronic communications every minute of every day — emails, text messages, blogs, Twitter and Facebook, to name a few.

It’s a good time to remember to take a break. Unplug — and unwind — this holiday season. Here are some tips:

Get out. Take a walk. Take your children to the park.
Reconnect. Visit a friend. Call someone you haven’t seen for years.
Be a kid again. Grab a board game. Play tag or hide and seek with your children.
Be creative. Draw or paint a picture. Learn how to knit. Take up scrapbooking.
Be old-fashioned. Write a poem, a love letter or a thank-you note.
Learn something. Read a book, newspaper or magazine.
Give back. Donate food or clothing to those in need. Volunteer at a local nonprofit.
Test your culinary skills. Bake, grill, sauté, roast. Try a new recipe.
Dance to the music. Put on your favorite CD. Play an instrument. Go to a concert.

But most of all, enjoy yourself. And reconnect with family and friends. Happy holidays!

Social Media Strategy and Success Stories

About to plan your social media marketing strategy? Wondering about the return you’ll get on your investment? Check out Socialnomics: Social Media ROI. This short video showcases success stories, plus some interesting facts. For example:

• More than 300,000 businesses have a presence on Facebook; about a third of these are small businesses.

• A Wetpaint/Altimeter Study found that companies that are heavily into social media blow away their peers in both revenues and profits. The study also found that companies using social media the most increased sales by 18%, while companies with the least social activity saw sales decline 6%.

• Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter.

• eBay found that participants in online communities spend 54% more money.

What’s your social media strategy?

Tiger should have taken advice from a PR professional.

Everybody’s weighing in on how Tiger Woods should have handled his recent scandal. Public relations professionals argue that he should have gotten ahead of the tabloids and issued a statement right after his accident. Lawyers and agents maintain that the man has the right to keep his personal life private and is not obligated to comment on these issues.

Clearly, Tiger had something to hide. As a PR professional, I knew that if and when he decided to talk, his very personal problems would become very public. And when US Weekly announced that it was releasing voicemail messages that proved his “transgressions,” Tiger finally took advice from PR people and came clean.

In this day of the 24-hour news cycle, Tiger would’ve been better off admitting his “sins” a week ago. The story would be over by now. But because he remained mum, reporters continued to dig and to speculate — and his silence became part of the story. Now that the truth is out, Tiger has taken control of the message and the worst is over for his public image. His sponsors are standing by him and he will still go down in history as the world’s greatest golfer. Let’s see if he can find a PR professional who can help him on the home front.

Twitter updates...brought to you by Saks Fifth Avenue and Microsoft.

As part of its legendary holiday display, Saks Fifth Avenue has partnered with Microsoft to put video screens, hooked up to computers, in its windows. The screens will display real-time tweets. When people use the #holidaywindows hash-tag on Twitter, their beaming tweets about Windows 7 (and their holiday wishes) will pop up in the Saks display. Hard-core Apple fans reportedly have tried to hijack the Twitter feed by writing anti-Microsoft tweets. But they aren’t getting through to the public. According to Microsoft, most negative tweets are being filtered out automatically. Plus, the company says, there’s a human backup.

Tweet now and see if you can reach New York’s holiday shoppers!

Sometimes you have to get mean.

If your communications department has been enlisted to shore up compliance with hand hygiene requirements (pre- and post-patient contact), take a lesson from Denver Health. As reported in the February 2009 issue of the Journal of Communication in Healthcare, Colorado’s primary “safety net” institution tried humor, incentives, prizes — but nothing worked until they got mean. They put a button on the home page of their intranet so employees could report offenders anonymously. Communication professionals are taught to rely on positive messaging to initiate change. But the Denver example shows that sometimes you have to slap a few hands to get them washed.

Marketing via a NYC cab

The old adage in New York City is never watch the road while being driven in a cab (I use the word “driven” loosely). Well, over the past year, that advice has become a bit easier to follow — LCD screens have been added to the backseats of NYC yellow cabs! Now, the once white-knuckled passenger can sit back and relax while catching the latest movie reviews, learning about the hottest new restaurants and, of course, watching countless marketing messages, specifically directed toward those of us who find ourselves bracing for the next brake-screeching halt or other equally surprising evasive maneuver.

From H&M to HBO, from Starbucks to State Farm, advertisers of all shapes and sizes are making the most of our commute, and are finding ways to engage with us as we sit in the comfort of a “pleather” bench seat. At times, I even find myself ignoring that blinking red light on the Blackberry or the melodic tones of the iPhone ringer (no, it isn’t Miley Cyrus) and instead directing my attention to the center console for some good old-fashioned digital entertainment and marketing messages, while doing 90 MPH down 9th Avenue!

Here’s a clip showing how Corcoran, a high-end real estate group, uses the in-cab screen to promote property listings with an interactive delivery. And the next time you’re hurtling down 9th, remember — keep your eyes off the road!

Medical Marketing Becomes an Origami Crane.

Authors: Kathleen Dunn and Peter Gordon

Part V. Now is it a crane?

It is if you can take each of your different edges and planes and decide that they meet at well-defined creases, and that the combination of folds results in a recognizable final offering and a structure to support it. This structure is evaluated by testing each of the message streams to ensure that they are believable (each target audience must be convinced that what you say about the offering is true — and that it has true value to their particular area of expertise) and supportable (all claims must be supported by legitimate data that are relevant to each prospect’s particular needs).

If your final figure withstands this multivariate scrutiny, then maybe you do have a crane. Or a bird that better suits your offering. It may not necessarily be symmetrical. In fact it may be a bit messier than you would like; life has a way of not conforming to the exact strictures of an artificial system. But don’t be bothered by the little wrinkles — it means you have tested this construct and found it robust. Now it’s time to see if it flies….

Welcome to Recruitment 2.0

Physician recruiters have fallen on hard times. Once viewed as heroes who deliver agents of change to organizations in need, they now find themselves constrained by ever-growing demands on their time and budgetary resources. As a result, recruiters are finding it harder to compete — they can only do so much with their list of contacts; they can expect only so much in return on their marketing efforts.

What’s a recruiter to do? Social networking on the web.Read full post...

How to measure effective recruitment marketing?

Recruitment marketing is a simple balancing act, right? Place your message on one side of the scale, and your communication medium on the other. If your message clearly illustrates the value of the position you are trying to fill, great. But if you don’t balance your strong message with an effective way to get it across to potential candidates, well, not so great. Conversely, if you have excellent communication tactics but a weak message, your scale will again be out of balance.

But something’s missing in this scale analogy: the fulcrum.Read full post...

What happened to old-fashioned communication?

Remember “The Telephone Hour” from the early 1960s Broadway show and movie Bye Bye Birdie? The song depicted a teenager talking to a friend on the phone, then that friend talking to another, and so on. This was — and may still be for many Boomers — the quintessential method of communicating. One friend tells another a story, and then a third friend hears it from the second.

These days, many Boomers communicate via Facebook — its fastest-growing demographic is people over 45. I have embraced Facebook myself. I enjoy catching up with friends and family, seeing photos, learning what’s going on.Read full post...

The Philadelphia Phillies - an example of great strategy!

It’s one of my favorite performances: George C. Scott as General George S. Patton. Love the attitude. But, most of all, I relate to what Patton was all about. This is a guy who knew what he had to do. He wasn’t popular because of it. He knew a thing or two about strategy. In one situation, when interrogating a German office, he wouldn’t give the guy the satisfaction of speaking to him in German — even though Patton spoke the language fluently. Strategy in action! The quote I remember most says it all, when Patton articulated what it would take to stymie the Nazi rampage — “First, you have to have a plan.”

Flash-forward about 80 years. A battle of a different sort — this time on the baseball field. The Philadelphia Phillies become contenders for the National League pennant and the World Series — not once, but twice. The first time, nobody saw them coming. Like Patton, these guys don’t leave anything to chance. Pitching rotations. Batter and pitcher matchups. Right down to who can be tempted with a high-pitch fastball for an easy out. They grasped the concept of having a plan. They’ve put together a formula to win.Read full post...

Medical Marketing Becomes an Origami Crane.

Authors: Kathleen Dunn and Peter Gordon

Part IV. Is it a crane yet?

Marketers need to keep in mind that each prospective audience comes to the party with its own set of contextual variables, as well as its own set of conceptions — and misconceptions. Obviously, you begin with a thorough analysis of the needs of each target audience. The critical questions and message streams that flow out of this analysis guide the communication with each.

Are you done? Do you have an origami figure? No, you only have several target-specific efforts or campaigns. Now comes the really hard part — the heavy folding. Just as when you’re creating an elaborate origami bird, you now have to rationalize the various facets of the offering into a cohesive branding structure.

Each message stream and the strategy that underlies it must be tested and evaluated from the perspective of each of the target audiences. Where are the touchpoints? How does this message impinge on the world of target A, on target B, on target C? Once you have taken all of your messages together and cranked them through each of the targets, you should have discovered where the commonalities are (this is the gold we seek, those key messages that serve as the foundation for the brand across all segments) and where the differences are (this is where you show your value, by creating expressions of the brand that serve different purposes, and different prospect needs, without contradicting each other).

In Part V, I think we’ll find the Crane.