My time with FYIndOut is coming to a close today, and I wanted to reach out and say goodbye. To all our readers – I appreciate every second of time you spend on our blog. I hope you enjoyed everything I’ve produced for you as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Although I will no longer be a weekly contributor to this blog, I will still be making my presence known. Look for my input in occasional guest posts and among the comment section. The FYIndOut team is incredible, and I will miss my place in the company very much.

As a final installment of what I hope you considered good rules to work by, I’m offering my top 6 takeaways from my time at FYIndOut:

1. It’s never about selling your company. It’s about building your relationships.
2. Everyone needs information, and giving means getting. Share any nugget of knowledge you can for the benefit of the masses.
3. Nothing beats great content with an automatic takeaway.
4. Be as viral as possible. Marketing doesn’t require deep pockets. Be creative, be innovative, and be web 2.0 savvy.
5. Connect with the people your audience already trusts. They are the ones who will offer dynamite input for your company that will be listened to and shared.
6. Social media is the bomb diggity.

In case we haven’t already connected on Twitter, lets do it now. Follow me @CAGarland.

Thanks for everything FYIndOut!

Keep reading everyone. I know I will.

(Roscoe with Dead End Sign by Zoomar)

Word on the street is we’re supposed to start being eco-friendly, and one easy way to do your part is by using less paper. Hard copy newsletters, brochures, and snail mail are serious paper wasters. I think the time has come for marketing to go green.

Environment aside, who reads hard copy brochures and newsletters anymore? How often is the information actually beneficial, and how much are you spending on making these ignored pamphlets? Almost everything people get in the mail that isn’t a Christmas card or a bill gets thrown away. Things need to be short, concise, convenient and useful for people to be willing to take the time to look at them. We are in a fast paced age of multi-tasking frenzy. Don’t hold people back with your wordy glossy handouts.

Email marketing is far more beneficial. People can skim it, keep it, reference it, and send it to their friends. Email marketing allows hyper links, and one click commenting abilities. Plus, if someone doesn’t want the information you’ve sent him or her, there is no paper wasted when the delete button is clicked.

It’s a simple message. There is no point to hard copies anymore, especially brochures. Besides the doctor’s office, nobody is going to take the time to read what you have to say. Stop spending your money and go green.

(Photo Go Green or Go Home by Little Miss Sunshine)

EMarketer put out an article Tuesday about what Americans want from brands. Their results give businesses some great knowledge points to think about when creating marketing campaigns. Stuff to keep in mind.

Two things that Americans want from brands:

1. Constant information and brand updates
2. Discounts!

When it comes to buying, Americans look more positively on word of mouth than any other advertising strategy. The data even showed that Americans will be more likely to buy when they are told face to face about a brand than in an online community, which is fascinating considering the amount of time we all spend on our social networks and online personas.

But, in the same realm, people are also far more likely to trust bloggers and social media contacts who they read or follow regularly about brands, than celebrities or news reps (keep that in mind when looking for people to pitch a product).

So how do you implement new strategies knowing this information? Does this information change who you are going to connect with in the future, and the strategy you will use to implement brand announcements?

Connecting with customers is getting harder. Marketing and sales has been making dramatic shifts in the past few years as traditional ad strategies become more and more obsolete, and those changes are going to have to continue in the months and years to come.

(Photo With a Little Help From My Friends by Herodoto)

There are tons of great books on business, but to make this easy, I’m offering my top five intriguing reads. Give them a skim!

1. Purple Cow, By Seth Godin: Seth Godin’s new book, Purple Cow is about transforming your business by being remarkable.
2. How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie: “There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything,” writes Carnegie, “and that is by making the other person want to do it.”
3. The Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki: What does it take to turn ideas into action? What are the elements of a perfect pitch? How do you win the war for talent? How do you establish a brand without bucks? These are some of the issues everyone faces when starting or revitalizing any undertaking, and Guy Kawasaki, former marketing maven of Apple Computer, provides the answers.
4. Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, by Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg: Twenty-five years ago, Herb Kelleher reinvented air travel when he founded Southwest Airlines, where the planes are painted like killer whales, a typical company maxim is “Hire people with a sense of humor,” and in-flight meals are never served–just sixty million bags of peanuts a year.
5. Your Marketing Sucks, by Mark Stevens: When Mark Stevens’ bestselling book, “Your Marketing Sucks,”hit the bookstores, Entrepreneurs and CEO’s across the globe called Stevens and said, “My marketing sucks – I need your help!” Why? Because the only effective marketing is marketing that SELLS!

(Photo My Favorite Bookshop by Lochaven)

It’s hard to make a blog truly great when people are talking about the same thing as you all over the blogosphere. To see success against all the competition, stay focused. Blogs are great for building traffic and providing content. But people need a reason to come read your stuff. Make sure blogs have a subject and stick to it. Blogs without a goal are useless to readers, especially when the content genre being published varies each time it goes up. Make a blogging strategy and follow some simple steps to make the most of your product:

• Brain Storm – Figure out who your customer is? What do they like, and why are they interested in what you do? Then, take that person and create a blog that makes sense for them. Think about what they would want to read about, and write about it.

• Tag and Promote – Always tag your posts. Remember that tagging is the only way that people will navigate to your blog from a different platform like Google or Technorati. Then be sure that while you let search engines do their thing, you simultaneously use your website to promote the blog. Start talking about it with your customers, in your emails and on your newsletters. Get on your companies twitter account (your company does have a twitter account doesn’t it?) and tweet your posts each time a new one goes up.

• Plan – It’s tempting to wait to decide what your post is going to be on until you sit down to write it…but that’s a dangerous game. Plan your blog posts at least a week before they are going up so you have some time to think about them and get the idea brewing.

• Pay attention to Comments – Promote commenting on your blog, and follow up on comments when people leave them. Always thank people for their input, and if necessary respond. Connecting with comment leavers will considerably improve their chances of coming back.

• Be Consistent – Pick days that you will be putting up new posts and stick to that schedule. Decide on a minimum number of posts you are going to put up a week, and stick to that number. Your readers will expect new posts regularly. Don’t let them down.

(Photo Calender by Mike (Inbet_1979))