What matters most in 2008? Well, it’s both new and old technology and some fundamental marketing that we often forget when we’re busy. Here are 5 ideas to help plan your year.

1. Widgets
If you haven’t jumped on the widget bandwagon, get going. Widgets are a great way to distribute coupons/discounts, blogs, product data, and anything customers or prospects might want to know. You can get them free on Widgetbox and dozens of other places. Or, you could get creative and design something fun that might go viral. The Web today is more about others distributing your information and message and widgets are a great way to get that done.
2. Mobile
Google’s Android should be out in the spring, and along with spectrum that isn’t controlled by the major cellular carriers, I believe it will have a huge impact on what marketers can do on cellphones. Take a look at how your Web-based marketing activities can be remade and run on cellphones, or think up new ideas that make cellphones a key part of your marketing. After several years of hearing this is the year of mobile, 2008 might actually be it.
3. Facebook Business Pages
It’s clear Facebook has taken the lead in defining the evolution of social networking. You an set up a business page. You can create your own applications for others to download. There are groups you can define based on something important aspect in your industry. If you’re willing to pour some energy into developing relationships and building community online, Facebook is a cost-effective way to disseminate your ideas and get people to interact.
4. Value
Before you kick off that next program or product determine what the one core value is to customers. How will you surprise or delight them? What are you giving them that they don’t already have? Too often we opt for more programs and products that don’t stand out rather than focusing on the one thing we can do really well.
5. Interaction
This is the age of engage. If you haven’t found the time to blog or wiki, get started. Add profile pages, comments and tags to your Web site. Get your customers, prospects, and employees talking, interacting, and collaborating. Show me more »

Fortune 500 company CEOs automatically have an audience of customers, competitors, shareholders, Wall Street analysts, press and so on. Starting a blog is more about strategy and voice, than about marketing and attracting readers. For small company CEOs it’s a different story. Why blog every day if no one is reading it?

Blogging is a live, ongoing conversation which completely changes the dynamic between a CEO and customers. It’s virtually impossible to interact regularly with every customer, but a blog that enables comments, polling, and blog post ratings, encourages customers and prospects to offer an opinion. These interactions help develop a relationship, and they are filled with interesting data points which often drive CEOs to blog even more.

Blogs inform in a way we can only partially control. A CEO’s personality comes across as they write. And readers comment adding to the conversation. A small company CEO blog is all about building an audience to increase your sphere of influence. So marketing your blog is as important as writing your blog.

Here are some simple ways to market your blog:

1. Make sure your blog is listed in all relevant blog listings, and submitted to blog search sites
2. Add tags that describe your blog so that it pops up in search results
3. Focus your blog on a subject or dynamic that is higher level than your products or services to attract a broader audience
4. Invite guest bloggers or interview interesting personalities to spice up your blog
5. Get a blidget from Widgetbox to syndicate your blog as a widget so others can run it on their website, blog, or desktop
6. Note your blog on your email signature, text message signature, business cards, and on your website
7. Refer to your blog in customer meetings, at conferences, and in speeches
8. When used as a resource by the press, reference you blog along with your title and contact information

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With numbers quoted as high as 50 million registered users on Facebook, and 100 million users on MySpace, it’s difficult to ignore social networking. But lots of people are still scratching their heads trying to figure out what this means for their business (or personal goals). Facebook has really grown up this last year, and there is a lot people can do to promote themselves and their interests.

1. Open a Facebook Page for Business. The options support small business, local business, individuals (artists, consultants), and products/brands, and so on. The business page allows you to focus and have an agenda while developing friends in a more natural tone (but of course, not unprofessional). Post on the page regularly and respond to friend’s posts quickly to keep the conversation going.

2. Use Facebook Beacon. This feature allows your friends’ comments (or other actions) on your site to link back to their Facebook page news feed with a link back to your site. The value of Facebook is that if you have 100 friends, and those friends have 100 friends, and those friends have 100 friends, your subject showing up on their news feeds can really spread your ideas.

3. Use Video. You can easily install and use the video application (free) on Facebook. That way you can post video to your page or in email. Video is engaging, and it can also be more personal giving others insight into you and your business.

4. Start a Facebook Group. Look for an idea or even a problem people who are interested in your business would relate to. Pick a very specific subject so people have a reason to join over another group that might sound similar.

5. Poll Your Friends to Get to Know Them Better. Facebook also offers a polling function. You can make this a regular part of your activities on your page and let everyone see the results. Or you can run short polls every few months to learn more about your audience and what they’re up to.

6. Create Your Own App. You can use Facebook Platform to create your own application. The goal is to attract more people and get them to interact with your product or your ideas.

Grow your connections. Ask people to join whether or not they are already on Facebook. Promote your Facebook page or group on your blog, business cards, email signature and anywhere else you can think.

There’s more, but I’ll save that for another blog. Doing all of this would be a great start! Show me more »

Web 2.0 isn’t just a set of technologies. It is a way of thinking, working, and behaving. It’s time to evaluate how audiences view your company and how you can update and enhance your interactions.

1. Provide a social space on your corporate Web site where your audience can interact. It can include profiles, comments, and voting on product features. Don’t censor negative comments. They offer the best opportunity to reveal the true nature of your company by the next steps you take over issues raised. This builds trust among your audience.

2. Monitor a variety of “neighborhoods” on the Web including blogs, social networking sites, user comment sites such as BazaarVoice, and price comparison sites to see what is being said about your company. Respond to negative comments with a plan of action not a position of defense.

3. Start a wiki that establishes an environment of collaboration with your customers and prospects and allows them to impact the product or service they purchase. By using Socialtext, Wetpaint, or one of the many other wiki hosting sites, this can be done quickly, easily, and cost-effectively.

4. Produce a widget which anyone can download and run on their blog or desktop which reminds them of your product or services through discounts, informative articles, or daily tips. If you have a little fun with the widget more people with use it and spread the word.

5. If you want to ensure your image remains authentic and clean, be the first to inform the public of bad news through your blog, wiki, or YouTube video. Don’t wait for pissed off customers to start demanding information so that bloggers start digging up the dirt. Get your dirty laundry out and offer a plan to resolve the issue. This builds trust and trust is more important than great products.

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Google is doing for the cellphone what IBM (inadvertently) did for the PC. By opening up the software platform to anyone, there will be thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of developers creating applications. Cellphones will become significantly cheaper. Cellphone service will become significantly cheaper (maybe free if Google gets its way). And we can finally move cellphones into the digital age.

Read more here. Watch this closely and plan it into your 2008 budgets. Mobile is the future of marketing! Show me more »

Top Five Reasons a Small Business Should Blog

1. Reveal the company’s personality. Your audience wants to know more about you than your product or service. They want to relate to your style and personality, and they want to know what’s important to you.
2. Become more transparent. As they say, “tell, don’t sell.” Provide any information that audiences will find useful or important. Explain why you prefer online customer service over phone calls, where you source materials, why you’re in this business, and other revealing details.
3. Open a dialogue with customers. Make sure a comments section is available on the blog so that readers can respond and interact. Customers reveal more of what they think online than they do in person or through formal channels. It’s a great learning opportunity.
4. Differentiate yourself from insular competitors. Be the company customers can interact with, offer ideas to, and relate to. Be open to outside input.
5. Attract more customers. By broadening your communications, you will attract more customers who are searching online for information on your market or product type. Be the information authority and customers will come to you.

Top 5 tips for small company blogs

1. Ensure the CEO writes his/her own blog. It must be authentic, and it’s worth their time to better connect with stakeholders, and enable outsiders to identify with the company.
2. Allow employees to blog. Set up a public discourse policy to ensure rules are followed, then let employees express their experiences and knowledge. They will draw a broader audience to your company and products.
3. Don’t hire a PR agency to blog for you. That’s not authentic and people will sense it.
4. Do market the blog on your corporate Web site, in email marketing campaigns, and of course through general search and blog search sites.
5. Be informative and interesting. Write in an informal tone that draws people in and makes them feel a part of the conversation.
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Historically, trademark protection has been a clear-cut business. Driven by lawyers, the rules are pounded into business managers: use the trademark consistently, and immediately stop outsiders from infringing.

Well the trademark waters have gotten fairly murky lately with folks making product videos and uploading them to YouTube or setting up a website using a corporate brand. Most notable examples include the Diet Coke/Mentos videos and fedexfurniture.com.

So, in the age of MySpace and YouTube, you have to ask, How do we define inconsistent use? And, where do we draw the line on infringing parties?

I listened to Liz Kennedy, trademark and licensing services director for the University of Southern California (USC) talk the other night at an AMA meeting. USC faces a broad set of issues. It’s a popular school with a sensational football team. It draws fans from students, to alumni, to community members and beyond. And they all want to make a statement.

Liz had an interesting take on the problems she faced. She acknowledged that there are passionate fans who want to have fun with the brand. They put up their own websites, videos on YouTube, and make their own t-shirts. She gives them a break, and essentially politely asks them to stop where necessary. Or, whenever possible, she just ignores the behavior, as long as it isn’t crude, rude, or completely obnoxious — USC is a family brand.

But many people (including LA gangs) rip off the USC logo and look and feel to make a profit on counterfeit t-shirts, hats, jewelry and other items. Those who commercialize for profit are prosecuted.

Liz has a clear understanding of her audience, and USC’s trademark licensing and infringement prosecution are well thought out strategies vs. knee-jerk reactions from lawyers. I think most companies get confused, because they haven’t adapted their definitions of inappropriate trademark use with today’s marketplace, and lawyers are given too much free reign. That can ruin the best marketer’s plans.

In this hyperinteractive world in which we now live and work, absolute consistency is much more difficult to maintain with trademarks. Companies that hold a hard line will alienate advocates. Consistency has to be weighed against the power of passionate advocates (which in USC’s case positively impact school attendance, donations, consumer goods sales, etc.).

Liz keeps an open mind and a good sense of humor. She and her team walk a fine line between encouraging passionate brand behavior, which is a great thing, and breaking down the brand value by allowing negative behaviors. The good thing is that they aren’t sending cease-and-desist letters to everyone who touches the brand. The bottom line according to Liz, “provide different and appropriate levels of response.” Show me more »

The trend towards traditional advertising growth may soon come to an end. The major consumer marketers who spend the big bucks on TV, print, and outdoor advertising and sponsorships are figuring out that their money is better spent creating relationships.

Nike, Coca-Cola, P&G, Anheuser Busch, Disney, and others are setting up their own social sites, virtual reality sites, WebTV and events, and they’re spending few dollars on traditional ads.

According to this New York Times article, “Nike executives say that much of the company’s future advertising spending will take the form of services for consumers, like workout advice, online communities and local sports competitions.”

But there’s more to it. Nike has really hit on something with Nike+ — a small sensor that tracks running information and posts it to your iPod or the Nike+ website. This little product (which apparently Nike doesn’t profit or make much a profit from) offers a service that keeps customers coming back to Nike over and over and over again. And of course that’s its purpose.

The reality is that TV ads are losing their ability to create trends or define what’s cool. There’s too much conversation and interaction on the Web and across blogs and social sites — and this is where the next great thing is being marketed.

What are your customers passionate about and how can you tap into that passion, and keep them coming back? Show me more »

This week BusinessWeek redesigned their print publication with a much cleaner, crisper look, and a clear focus on their core business coverage (they dumped lifestyle). The print publication has gotten back to its core competencies (just business), and its persuasive value (short to the point articles) that makes it stand out. (Good choice).

Older products tend to get over developed. (I’ve been reading BusinessWeek in print for almost 20 years.) They can lose their purpose. As a product’s scope is broadened, it has more crossover with other products expanding the competition (and giving customers more reasons to choose some other company’s more focused product).

Whether you’re vying for customers or ad revenue, focus on your core audience and core differentiator is critical. For BusinessWeek, the impact of a substantial print ad revenue decline (according to a WSJ article), combined with the move readers have made to the Web, has driven them to make the hard choices.

BusinessWeek has developed its website far beyond its print content, incorporating fresh content and a broader appeal with reader comments, columnist blogs, and other Web 2.0 features. They now have to remake the print publication (focusing on the road warrior and over 40 set who still like some things in print) to realize the most ad revenue.

When going after ever bigger audiences and broader revenue streams, it is easy for your product to lose its way, essentially, get beyond its intended use. Focus is harder. It takes discipline — a willingness to say no, and to let your competitors go wild while you stay focused. If you think there’s market potential for new features, figure out if it makes more sense to put them in new product.

Sometimes you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you just have to figure out why you were here in the first place. Show me more »

It takes your calls, alerts you to meetings, receives coupons and instant discounts. It surfs the Web, tells you where you are and where you’re going. It holds a treasure trove of photos, sings your favorite songs, and goes with you on jogs and hikes. It takes pictures of your kids on their birthday or breaking news events.

The mobile phone is the portal to almost every human being. 1 Billion are sold each year. Over 1 billion are camera enabled.

One day (hopefully) soon, it will be capable of location smart messages, point and receive information, and automatic ordering/account debiting. (All of this is currently available in Japan and some of it in parts of Europe.)

What is your mobile marketing plan? Show me more »