Mindset: How it can grow your business - or shut it down

Mindset: How it can grow your business - or shut it down
Have you read Mindset: the New Psychology of Success? Carol Dweck, a research psychologist authored the book in 2006 after accumulating 20 years of data. After reading it, I signed up and attended 3 conferences in order to open up...

Intel Ups Dollars to Digital Media
Big Brands Increase Percentage of Sopend on Online Components

Intel decided to increase its co-op ad spend in digital media by 35% reports Online Spin.  Intel Corp. spends $300 million on their advetising worldwide.  So this is a hefty chunk of change we're talking about here.

 ”We’re going where the consumers have gone,” Sean Maloney, executive vice president at Intel, told The New York Times. “For the longest period of time, consumers formed their attitudes through TV, print, radio, and from the middle ’90s onward, there was more influence from the Net,” he was quoted as saying.

Any marketing or PR 101 class will teach you that you have to keep your eye on where the consumers are.  And just when you think you have them pegged, they shift.  This shift in media influence has been happening for quite a while and there is no doubt anymore that online is where the consumers are.

Take note that Maloney is talking about co-op advertising.  It's 'Intel Insde' brands like Dell, HP, Toshiba, sony and Lenovo.  So they will also be shifting their budgets to more digital media.

In the past 6 months online advertising hit the $10 billion mark, up 27% from last year.

What's in your marketing and PR plan for 2008?

Delta's Blog Gets Caught in the We We Calculator
Blogging is an amazing tactic for engaging in conversation with your customers

Brian Eisenberg of Grok.com took a well placed swipe at the Delta blog today.  Brian ran the text of the post about how Delta gathers customer input through the customer focus ("We-we") calculator and found these results:

Your Customer Focus Rate: 17.39%
You have 4 instances of customer-focused words.

Your Self Focus Rate: 82.61%
You have 15 instances of self-focused words.
You have 4 instances of the Company Name.

You speak about yourself approximately 0,005 times as often as you speak about your customers.

Delta has an ad running on Yahoo! News that takes you to their blog.  The ad copy says change is about offering your two cents worth so Brian promptly gave his two cents to the author of this blog post:

1. The key to great customer insight and analysis is empathy. Don't live by the surveys or the data; live with your customers. How often do you go through the process of booking and flying, just like the majority of your customer's do? Want to improve the experience? Experience it like most people do. You'll hate it. Really!

(I wholeheartedly agree.  I am also a Delta frequent flyer and the last two calls to Delta have been a severe pain in the rear.  In fact, just a month ago I opted to fly with AirTrans because it was cheaper to buy a new business class ticket with them than change the date on the economy class Delta ticket I already had!!!!).

2. Show us you really care about listening to OUR voices. I believe you have honorable intentions, but your words are all about Delta.

This next comment from Brian really made me chuckle

The Greeks use the symbol delta to represent change because "Διαφορά" means "difference" in Greek. Will you really make a difference in customers' lives, or will you be content putting lipstick on a pig?

Web 2.0 News Content on Your Website
What Journalists Want Online

If you've been in the dark about how to plan your online news for the media, a new study from Bulldog Reporter and the TEKgroup can guide your content strategy for 2008.

Journalists’ use of online newsrooms, blogs, RSS and social media is much higher than most PR professionals had thought - in fact the greatest change in journalism practices due to new Internet technology is the ability to access corporate news and contact information online 24 hours a day.

• Nearly half of all journalists report visiting a corporate website or online newsroom at least once a week
• 85% visit at least once a month
• More than a quarter report regularly reading five or more blogs to research desired topics
• Nnearly 70% follow at least one blog regularly
•  More than a quarter (28%) of journalists visit a social media or networking site, such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, at least once a week
• More than 44% visit at least once a month
• Nearly 16% of journalists receive five or more RSS feeds of news services, blogs, podcasts or videocasts every week
• 37% receive at least one regular RSS feed
• 20% say they look for audio and vidoe material at least once a month
• 64% report that they use Google or Yahoo! online news services

If you don't yet have an online newsroom this needs to be top of your list for 2008.

Learn to optimize your news content for search so that it can be easily found when these journalists are searching Yahoo and Google News.

Add images, audio and video to your news content.  it's fairly simple to do and it won't break the budget.

Syndicate all your content with RSS feeds. If you don't have an RSS feed then you have no chance that yours will be that one feed they read regularly.