Leaving Facebook

I don't usually post or link to other content, but this article (on LinkedIn, no less) about one company leaving Facebook has some excellent points about often-forgotten marketing concepts. This also ties in to my previous post about online being just another delivery vehicle.

Proactive vs. Reactive Marketing

Proactive Marketing creates and takes advantage of ways to build your business on your terms and within your budget. Reactive Marketing robs you of stability, cohesion, and the benefits of all the strategic planning you've done.

All too often, businesses and organizations fall into one (or, occassionally, both) of two marketing traps.

1) They don’t have a marketing plan that is based on a solid percentage of revenue, and thus they just respond to immediate input to make a decision. (“Hey,” says the ad sales guy, “We’ve got a great new section that you just have to advertise in.”) Or…

2) They do have a plan, but it’s so rigid it leaves no room for the occasional opportunity that really is special or a benefit to their business.

200 Words on… Disaster Plan Execution (Part II)

Previously, we looked at aspects of what to include in a disaster plan. Now we’ll briefly talk about how to handle an emergency if or when it happens.

How to (Possibly) Tell If a Craigslist (or Other) Ad is Fake

There are lots of good and legitimate job opportunities advertised on Craigslist. There are also a lot of spam, scam, and fake job ads. Below you'll find a few tips to help spot CL scam ads. But the real reason for this post is to help create an awareness of what is bad advertising, bad branding, and, yes, outright scam advertising.

200 Words on… Creating a Disaster Plan

What do you do when the unexpected happens? When a small plane hits one of the schools in your district? When an executive is accused of misconduct? When a fire breaks out in your stockroom? A disaster/crisis-management plan should take the guesswork out of “what do we do now?”

Intellectual, Emotional, Intuitive & Sensual Branding

Some folks in the psychological world say there are four aspects to our personality – intellectual, emotional, intuitive, sensual. Or what a psychologist friend once simplified as “head, heart, gut, groin.”

Whether or not we believe in those exact categories, our personalities are made up of several levels. Communications theory says that the more different ways we connect with a receiver (customer, client, voter, employee, etc.) the more likely we are to affect a favorable response.

Good branding should try to address as many personality levels as possible. For example, the merged branding (from a visual standpoint) of Continental and United airlines used the Continental globe tail logo and the United name. Gold (the color in the globe and in the stripe along the side of the planes) is a rich, positive color that can connect on an intellectual (rich) level, an emotional one (security), and a sensual one (warmth).