March 2013 - Page 4 of 4

It’s daunting being a marketer these days. The lexicon in how we market has widened into an array of confusing methods to attract better brand positioning, growth, ROI, influencer authority, social this and that, and consumer loyalty.

The latest favorite is influencer marketing. Last week on this blog, we took an angular look at Google+, Google Authorship and Influence Marketing.

Buy Influencer Marketing Books

Several books written by peers in my own social circles are must reads to keep us thinking strategically and visionary.

You may pre-order Influence Marketing: How to Create, Manage and Measure Brand Influencers in Social Media Marketing (Que Biz-Tech) written by Danny Brown and Sam Fiorella.

They have been writing it up with a large amount of content on blogs, Google+ Communities, and in comments all over. It promises to be a must-buy and read.

Meanwhile, a dear colleague of mine, Mark W. Schaefer, has written a quick read,Return on Influence, The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing, his second book that has hit the corporate world (IBM recently bought 500 copies) and the social media sector by storm.

Because I know all three of these peeps and vouch for their own cred and influence, you ought to consider purchasing these books for your reading pleasure.

Now, back to the topic at hand…If some marketers think they’re drowning, how does a company cope with that?

Does every marketing team need to know every aspect of marketing, or can they learn in a steady trickle?

The good news is, everyone is in the same boat absorbing knowledge and learning new tactics at the same time. How marketers execute on these evolving techniques is how one differentiates.

Here are my thoughts on how companies should stay the course with these basics and never mind the marketing buzz until prepared to address them head on:

Five Marketing Basics

1. Set up a solid team of people with the right mix of marketing for various types of organizations, someone in PR, another knows email and inbound marketing, a copywriter, a social media enthusiast, and someone familiar with advertising for all media.

2. Assess and solidify brand and dust off that mission statement! It’s critical to revisit this to ensure the company is growing in alignment with founders’ goals and vision.

3. Hire Jayme Soulati (shameless, I know) to do your message mapping exercise. No matter if your company is established or just starting, message mapping charts your company’s communication course.

4. Build a responsive website. I’m not talking about a website that looks good on a mobile device; I’m talking about a scalable site that conforms to smart devices and positions calls to action and contact information on the top of the screen followed by all the rest of the goodies. When your company keeps a website that requires visitors to slide windows back and forth, then the message you’re sending is pretty much, “We just don’t care.”

5. Pay attention to social media and engage already. You have to; you just do. In this post-social media adoption era, there are still companies without the basics in place. Companies owe it to consumers to connect via social media channels. If all we get is a direct mail coupon with no other channel, that is grounds for negative online reputation.

Confused about any of the above? Please ask me, I’m right here.

By Jayme Soulati

SUBSCRIBE AND NEVER MISS A POST!

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.

~ Brendan Gill

Read that again. Roll it around in your head for a moment. Let it sink in.

Brendon Gill (1914 – 1997) was a writer at The New Yorker for more than sixty years. I have yet to read any of his articles or books (though I have his non-fiction work, Here at The New Yorker, on hold at my local library), but that quote has always stuck with me. When Jayme asked me to write a guest blog, it was one of the first things that popped into my head.

What if life really isn’t meant to be serious?

What if we’re missing the whole point?

I was especially delighted with Jayme’s invitation to the Happy Friday Series because she and I met over a conversation about happiness. It was 2009 and, as part of my pitch to win a writing contest with a “good mood” theme, I put together a fundraiser. Jayme was one of the very few people who stepped up to participate. We were complete strangers, and yet she raised her hand and got involved.

All these years later (Has it really been FOUR years?!?!), we are still friends; and – apparently – we are both still interested in happiness.

Happiness is a funny thing. Everyone professes to be pursuing it, but so many people seem afraid to express it. There’s a strange stigma attached to happy people. I wrote about this in a post on my marketing blog about the power of enthusiasm, “Sadly, happy people are often looked down upon … We assume that they must be missing something. We’re suspicious of people who smile too much. What image comes to mind when I say ‘village idiot.’ How about the expression ‘grinning like the cat that ate the canary’? See what I mean?”

People who seem too happy are often labeled as being “not quite all there.” We are more willing to trust cynics and pessimists. Something in our culture has trained us to elevate the worth of opinions that are based in negativity and doubt the veracity of the happy.

Let’s stop that.
Let’s start a new trend of trusting happy people.
Let’s make it acceptable to show your happiness.
Let’s dare to be happy ourselves.

Can you imagine the possible ripple effect?

Here is a video I originally shared on the blog where Jayme and I met four years ago. It’s guaranteed to make you smile. I hope you’ll share it far and wide and set some happiness in motion today.

P.S. Here’s one more bit of Brendan Gill wisdom, “The first rule of life is to have a good time. The second rule is to hurt as few people as possible. There is no third rule.”

Go forth and be happy.

Jamie Wallace is an award-winning copywriter and marketing strategist by day, an aspiring author by night, and a mom and hopeless romantic 24/7. Find her at suddenlymarketing.com or on Twitter @suddenlyjamie.