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)

Over the years, web development has morphed from static web pages that included content and style in one file, to large complex web applications that pull information from databases while adjoining multitudes of PHP, JavaScript, and CSS files. A developer’s Rubik’s cube is getting all of these different platforms that make up a modern day web page (MySQL, PHP, JavaScript and the DOM) to all talk to each other seamlessly, while keeping security in mind.

Typically, when a developer needs their JavaScript to access a variable contained within PHP, it requires an AJAX call to the PHP script which would return the variable(s) in JSON format. This method can sometimes be undesirable as it posses security vulnerabilities. Also, if the AJAX call is made on the page load, it’s just one more HTTP request slowing down the load speed of your site. There’s also the method of placing needed variables in a hidden input and then retrieving them from the DOM with JavaScript, but with the advent of Firebug, no hidden input is safe from malicious users these days. So how can we tackle these issues while still seamlessly integrating PHP and JavaScript? Easy. Have PHP parse your JavaScript files.

Create a .htaccess file in your JavaScript directory and add this line:

This tells the PHP parser to read files that have a ‘js’ file extension. Now you can simply set and unset $_SESSION variables to pass values to the JavaScript. For example:

PassPHPVarToJS.php

/js/PassPHPVarToJS.js

This will securely alert the PHP variable to the user while avoiding using an additional HTTP request.

But what about passing arrays and objects? Not a problem. Example:

PassPHPObjectToJS.php

/js/PassPHPObjectToJS.js

PHP 5.2 and higher have built in JSON functions, so you can easily convert PHP variables to JSON. If you’re running on a lower version of PHP there are solutions out there that you can include in your page to achieve the same output.

That’s it! Your site just instantly became more secure while promoting low coupling and high cohesion. Now some might point out that this slows down your execution time due to the fact that PHP is now parsing extra files it normally wouldn’t parse, but I would argue that the extra parsing time is negligible, and that its quicker than making an unsafe and unnecessary AJAX call.

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))

There are thousands of great articles out there that will tell you how to create the right social media strategy for your business and build your brand appropriately.  However, when I talk to other businesses practicing social media, the number one place they’ve had issues after coming up with their strategy is with administration or lack thereof. 

Most end up putting their entire social media strategy in the hands of one person and then leave them alone as their own island.  The big issue arises when that person leaves the company and the entire social media effort and connections go with them.

Here are five administrative tips that can help you make the most of your efforts and insure that you don’t lose months of work when one person leaves your company.

1. Have an administrative strategy

You’ve just spent the time and energy coming up with a great social media strategy that fits in and enhances your overall marketing plan.  Don’t drop the ball by not taking the time to come up with an administrative strategy as well. 

Chances are that your social media strategy will involve participating in multiple sites, networks, and methods.  Take the time to decide if it’s best to participate using your company identity or someone from your team.  For everything that uses your company identity, make sure you have the login information documented and stored in a secure location where only the people that need to have access to it.  The less, the better but it should be more then one. 

Also, use tools that are web-based such as Hootsuite or Cotweet where you can manage more then one account and have multiple users.  That way, when one person goes on vacation or leaves, others can jump right in without having to recreate groups, alerts, and all of the other stuff that goes with effectively managing your social networks.

 2. Make sure you’re company is connected

There are different opinions about if you should have a company profile on Twitter or other social media or communicate via your team’s profiles.  We do both and I highly recommend other companies do the same.

You wouldn’t put a company savings account in one of your employee’s names because (outside of being a bad idea on multiple levels) if they ever left your company, all of the company funds you’ve built up and saved go with them.  So why would you just have your community manager’s account be the only one out there representing your company.  All of the contacts and connections they’ve made will go out the door with them when they leave and you’ll be back at square one.  Our team’s policy is always to make sure that we follow and connect with people we can help or learn from on our company profile as well as anyone on the team’s.  So in September, when our community manager was done with their internship, we didn’t lose any of the great relationships we made.

3. Use the User Roles in your blog software

We’re huge advocates of the owners being Editors and making the others on the team authors.  It’s not a matter of trust.  It’s a matter of staying in the loop and making sure your blog posts are sticking with your strategy.  With so much going on, it’s easy for managers and owners to put reading their own blog on the backburner.  This is a huge mistake. Plus, what does it say if you don’t want to read your own blog.

Placing yourself in the Editor role makes you have to read each post and also notifies you of all comments and trackbacks so you know what’s working and what’s not.

4. Have a central management system

This ties into #1 a little.  Just as with passwords, have a central place where the people can have access to all of the information they need to do their job without having to call anyone else to figure out what’s going on.

As an example, our team uses Google Docs with limited access to manage things like:

• Blog log and schedule – Shows all blog posts, dates, topics, authors, key words used
• Trendsetter List – List of identified trendsetters for our industry and their contact info, including email, company URL, Twitter, Notes
• PR and Blogger Contact List – List of key writers covering our area and their contact info
• Contact Log – Log of who we’ve contacted (usually from the Trendsetter and PR/Blogger lists) and when, topic, if we received a response

5. Change the locks, when someone leaves

Don’t be lazy.  When someone in your social media loop leaves the company or group, take an hour to change all of the passwords and make the appropriate user deletions from the various applications you’re using.  Make sure this is one of the top items in your HR process for an employee exit.  Taking away a person’s access to their work PC and office doesn’t do your business any good if you’re still allowing them to make a possibly unprofessional comment on behalf of your company to thousands of people, prospects, and customers. 

Even when people leave on great terms, this needs to be done.  It’s like putting on a seatbelt. It takes up some of your time and you don’t plan on needing it, but you know it’s more then worth it if you do.

These are some of the administrative things we’ve done to make the most of our social media strategy.  What does your team do?