Here is a short and sweet suggestion that could get your phone ringing more often for sales.

When you are sending emails, make sure you have your phone number, address, web site address and other marketing URLs (such as Facebook and Twitter) at the footer of EVERY message that you send. It is an easy way to make sure that your customers can easily find a way to contact you to do more business. It also helps when they forward your email to friends so that they too can also easily do business with you. Doesn't get much easier than this, yet we see it all the time. Don't miss this easy opportunity to help your customers do business with you!

It seems everyone these days has a smartphone, such as the iPhone and Android phones. But how many companies actually use this to their advantage when it comes to marketing and social media? Enter QR codes.

Product placement is becoming more prevalent on TV as use of the DVR becomes more popular. Advertisers are coming up with inventive ways to get you to see their products, but are we, the consumers, even noticing? I think it depends on the brand’s top-of-mind awareness, which is what every brand strives for. Top-of-mind awareness is the first brand you think of when asked about a product. For example, when someone says name a brand of detergent, the first brand you think of is your top-of-mind awareness.

 

When it comes to email marketing, some people just do not get the big picture. Literally.

Below is an example of an email as it came into my email inbox this morning. It is from a place that I have stayed before, Diamond Resorts (kudos for continuing to market to me after the initial sale.)

We hear the phrase, “Go Big or Go Home,” all the time, whether it has to do with sports, a leap of faith or just life in general. Lately I’ve noticed that social media campaigns are doing the same – going big. They’re pulling out the big guns not only when it comes to the quality and consistency of posts, but also in the way they reward their Following, whether it is on Facebook, Twitter or a location-based social media site like foursquare. These incentives, whether they’re gift cards, concert tickets or even all-inclusive vacations, are keeping these followers coming back for more and most importantly, engaged with the brand.

I was always a little bit skeptical of these online giveaways; you always have to enter your e-mail address or another form of personal information and I just wasn’t interested. It wasn’t until I actually won something through a social media contest that I became a believer. My first win came from the Fairmount Hotel in Dallas, and I won a prize valued at $1,000 just by following them on Twitter as a part of their campaign to hit 1,000 Twitter followers. A few weeks later, I won Lady Gaga tickets just by Twittering the response to a fashion question from InStyle magazine. After collecting my winnings, I was hooked on the idea of instigating a social media giveaway campaign for a client.

There's little a client respects and appreciates more, than setting a realistic and accurate expectation of the services you intend to deliver. Want to damage your reputation the easy way? Promise someone something you can't deliver on. Chances are, your client is going to keep an eye out for someone new to provide your services. The following is a few basic fundamentals to meeting your client's expectations.

TIMELINES:
When it comes to web design and development timelines, be sure to work within your project management schedule. Better to be conservative when quoting delivery dates, than run the risk of not meeting your deadline.

SCOPE OF PROJECT:
On deliverables, the more detail regarding the scope of the project you can put in writing, the more likely you are to have a satisfied client. When it comes to search engine optimization or a social media campaign, be certain you've communicated as much of the techniques and practices you intend to utilize as well as how you will measure your ROI and results. 

COMMUNICATION:
When handling revisions requests for your projects like web development and email marketing services, this could be an area of opportunity for you. The value and cost of communication is often overlooked. Designating a project manager, who "all" correspondence will be funneled through, increases efficiency and limits miscommunication, streamlines your process, eliminates confusion and increases profits.

A client who receives clear communication, the services delivered on time and as promised, is a client you keep. 

I am currently the social media intern here at Atomic, I just started at the beginning of June and I will be the first to say this small-staffed business knows how to work hard and have fun. Most everyone here will go out of their way (or sometimes I’m just on their way) to say hi, but either way they make time.  As a recent graduate of Texas Tech, I have been told many times by many adults that the economy was so bad right now there are no jobs out there. I was told enough times I started believing them.

Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with several local Dallas web designers, agencies / firms, and independent developers. In an effort to practice what we preach, I am going to share a list that we feel will be helpful to the audiences that typically are searching for our services.

I spend a bulk of my days attempting to find companies who are interested in taking their social media efforts to the next level. Over the past few months, there have been some incredibly large opportunities for Fortune 500 organizations to effectively manage their reputation via social media. Consider the Toyota recall situation. Millions of Toyota owners wondering if their vehicle had the potential for unintended acceleration. The thousands and thousands of phone calls and customer visits that could have been avoided by addressing the situation on the heavily trafficked social media outlets. Putting those loyal customer’s minds at ease and reassuring them that their vehicle was safe. I personally own a Toyota Camry and was bombarded by opportunistic solicitations from a local Nissan dealership. I wonder how many people traded in their Toyota for another brand over the past few months?

 

This is intended to be an interactive blog. Your opinion matters! Which is your favorite? Or should I say, least favorite?

You’re driving down a common three lane road in Plano, or Allen, or just about any suburban city in the Metroplex. It’s posted with a speed limit of 40 or 45 mph. The cars in front of you are riding directly next to each other at the exact same speed of 38MPH. However, if one of them does speed up, the others follow suit. Like they’re sheep or something.  

Congratulations to the Class of 2010 – you did it! You’ve finished four (or maybe more) stressful years of college and you’re ready to enter the working world. You’ve heard all the dismal news about the economy, unemployment rates and limited entry-level jobs, yet you’re still heading out there with your chin up and resume in hand looking for an opportunity to put that degree to use.  You put in all the time and money to get to where you are today, but a bland resume, being un-prepared for an interview and sharing to much about yourself online can easily land you back at the starting line when applying for a post-grad internship or job.

I will assume that because you are reading this, you see there may be value in Twitter (congratulations)

Who is using Twitter?
There are executives, blue collar workers, celebrities, teachers, moms, dads, subject matter experts, and just about every other type of person / demographic using Twitter.

Why is Twitter important?
Because it answers a critical question… “What are you thinking about Right Now!”

When people answer this question, they are giving insights to services and people they may need. I like to think of this as a very proactive way to find new clients or support existing ones.

You have created a beautiful design for your email marketing newsletter, gathered a powerful list of consumers that are interested in your product (shame on you if you bought your list), laid out the content perfectly and have everything that your target market wants to see. In your mind there is no possible way that you can mess this up. But there is, you send the newsletter at the wrong time thus losing many potential readers and customers that you would have otherwise opened it. Well ain’t that a problem?

Many of us have been woken up by a newsletter arriving at our phones at midnight on a Thursday night, and we have all been annoyed by newsletters filling up our inbox on a Monday morning when all we want to do is catch up on emails that came this weekend. They are annoying, but more than that, ineffective. I have been working on newsletters for over a year, and it has been a trial and error process for me all along to figure out the correct day and time to send a newsletter. Throughout this year I have sent out more than 8 million newsletters and I have analyzed the send reports since day one trying to find patterns. What you are about to read is my personal opinion, and it’s based on my own research with newsletters. One important thing I have to point out before I start is that this does not apply to every single newsletter, depending on your business trade or target market you might want to tweak your sending times.

We’ve all been there – you’re frustrated and annoyed with your client or co-worker, and you’re just about to boil over. But instead of taking a moment to cool off, you turn to your trusty Twitter account and begin to vent about your frustrations. Then you hit Enter and release all your negative thoughts into the Twittersphere. For a few minutes, you might feel a little bit better having released some tension and begin to go on with your day.

We talk to prospects every day that are interested in Social Media Marketing. They hear and see the buzz surrounding it. They hear the great success stories  and they may even have tried themselves and not had much to any luck.

So what makes a Social Media campaign work?
How do you get people interacting on it and sharing your commercials; errr… I mean "helpful information."

I recently came across a fantastic script that will significantly improve web development for sites that use rounded corners, text shadows, and box shadows. This script allows Internet Explorer 6-8 to render rounded corners, box shadows, and text shadows where it wouldn't otherwise. The tool is called IE-CSS3.

It's quite simple... all you have to do is upload the script to your site and add the behavior property to the CSS of the element you want to have rounded corners:

Have you seen those Fancy Fan pages usually from big corporations or hip design companies on Facebook? Have you noticed how most of them have content that as a visitor you can’t access until you become a Fan? Well if you are like me you probably think this is something that a regular person trying to attract more Fans on his Fan Page won’t be able to do and will require the assistance of some expensive developer…

Well good thing I was wrong (this is rarely the case) because with the help of Facebook FBML it is really simple to create a teaser landing page for those unlucky few who have not yet experienced the pleasures of becoming your Fans.

I joined Facebook in fall of 2004 when I was a college freshman. Way back then, Facebook was referred to as TheFacebook.com, there were no photo albums or Fan pages and the idea of Facebook Chat was unheard of. Harvard student Mark Zuckerburg launched Facebook in February 2004 and required members to have a college e-mail address to gain access to the collegiate networking site. Policies changed in 2006 when Facebook opened up to the world and just required users to be at least 13 years old and to have a valid e-mail address. When Facebook celebrated its’ sixth anniversary in February 2010, there were more than 400 million active users with more signing up each day.

By now, it’s no secret that social media is the latest marketing craze. Everywhere we turn, “Facebook this” and “Twitter that”. “Follow me here” and “forward this to a friend”. Many companies are now scrambling to meet the expectations of an ever expanding demographic of technology friendly consumers. Similar to real life social activity, many of us are not equipped with the skills necessary to successfully connect with our prospects on social media. The question isn’t “if” they should utilize social media. The question they’re asking themselves is “how to do it effectively”.

 

One of the best teachers I ever had was Dr. Alice Kendrick; she currently teaches advertising Research and Account Planning at Southern Methodist University while leading the field of Account Planning. She taught me many valuable lessons about becoming a successful account planner.

For example how we should always keep things simple (The KISS Principle), how we should never assume anything in this world and to always question everything. But of all the lessons she taught me one of the most important one as an account planner was to always put yourself in the shoes of the consumer, think like they do, act like they do, become your consumer.

Redirecting a site from non-www to www is pretty straight forward using .htaccess, but not so much when you are on a Windows box. The approach usually taken invloves pasting code (below rewrite engine on)  in the .htaccess file and uploading to the server in the root.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

The steps for IIS redirect is a different story, and most the time you do not have access to do this.

Everyone knows that word-of-mouth can either make or break a restaurant so it only makes sense that restaurants pay close attention to social media marketing. After all, social media is now one of the fastest forms of word-of-mouth marketing.

This article is assumes you have already have setup a Facebook fan page, twitter account, and setup your profile on other networks (you didn’t forget Yelp did you?).

If you have not done so, get started... but a few quick words on setting them up…

1. Try and use the same name across all the networks if possible
2. Make sure you are the primary person for the account (ie. don’t let the kid that “gets” Facebook be the one that sets up your page or it will forever be linked to that person’s profile (think: What if they quit or get fired?)
3. Reserve the names even if you don’t plan on using them right now

So, for those of you that do have the accounts, that is great… now what?

Many of you are aware of the explosion of social media in the past few years. We have all heard the names, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter... Google? Yes, Google has entered the social media market and is making a big impact.

Google currently has three social media applications:

• YouTube (public)
• Google Buzz (public)
• Google Wave (in development)