In my 11 years experience working in direct and indirect capacities with some well known national brands, I’ve seen leaders (directors, VP’s, managers, etc.) come and go. And in these foul economic times as companies start their South Beach diet to cut fat throughout the organization, the emphasis on your worth and your value to the company is essential in these times.

My hat rack shows my experience over the years as web marketing manager, entrepreneur, board director and director of Internet marketing. And working along side other management and leaders in the organizational structure, I’ve come to witness and learn first hand, common attributes, and tools that make some leaders great, and others leaders dissolve.

I’ve found great leadership does not have to be complex, whether it be a director of web marketing, media, information technology, coach and yes, even fatherhood.
All leaders in any level and capacity whom I’ve found ‘great’, are supported by the people they lead, and who all demonstrate common personal characteristics, which is one of two ingredients that lay the foundation of a great leader. (the other ingredient…..competence…more in another post).

Its a given great leadership typically comes over time, and some attributes of great leadership can be taught, and others born with. Though with a even mixture of experience, self-development and character, make good leaders great. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the top studies reported in 2008 found social media blogs influence a consumers online social behavior of their purchasing decisions far greater than social networks, as blogs that influence consumers generate a timely conversation and perceived as a greater trusted resource.

Covered by Clickz, the study conducted by JupiterResearch called “Harnessing the Power of Blogs”, looks at the evolving influence from online visitors/readers, and how they engage and interact with the blog media platform.

With the explosion of blogs (blog marketing) over the last few years, and the integration of professional, personal and industry blogs into the marketing framework of companies, more and more individuals seek blogs as their direct form of news and consumer research and informative guides. This is shown from the study where JupiterResearch noted a 300 percent growth in monthly blog readership in the past four years.

The curious question is why? Why blogs? Aside from the rich, frequent content that’s absorbed by Google and compliments a businesses search strategies to produce saturated results on the core subject matter the reader is seeking, readers find blogs more useful as a resource by using its links and multiple resources referenced in the blog. This contributes to spark or extend the conversation on the blog post/article. And the frequency blog readers flock to the web to jump into the conversation is shown with 49% of blog readers defined as someone who reads a blog at least once a month, and 71% reading more than one. And multiple blog sources reflect more opportunities for contextual and online ads, referrals in comments by readers, and any direct or indirect references within the content itself. Read the rest of this entry »

2008 is coming to a close, and you may have embarked on your first, well-overdue, search engine optimization (SEO) project for your business. Many steps were likely taken in your SEO project through the discovery phase of assessing how friendly your website architecture is for search, keyword discovery around your industry/market/brand/product/competitors, research where your visitors hang out online, the physical optimization and improvements to your site, etc. Now that your website is SEO’d for Google and others, what’s next? Read the rest of this entry »

Chances have it you use a social network as Facebook or MySpace, or contribute to a social media platform, such as a personal or corporate blog. The online playground is full of social activities with everyone including your mother jumping onto the next latest and greatest way to connect with friends, family, professionals and groups of your related interests.

Even with the recent win of Barack Obama as America’s new president, his campaign tapped into leveraging social media and networks to reach out to the niche audiences throughout America – by ethnicity and age demographics. Whether a special environmental group locatd in Seattle, or the tens of thousands of non-voters between 20 to 30 years of age in Chicago and New York, social networks and media platforms were a successful channel to mix into the Obama’s marketing campaign to win new voters.

2009 will bring to the boardroom a number of conversations about how social network and media can fit into the upcoming marketing campaign or yearly marketing plan. Hell, any forward thinking company who’s marketing can shift as quickly as my snowboard will cut and curve down the hills of Whistler mountain this year, will be on the edge of trying to learn how best to fit social networks as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and social media as blogs and forums to into their marketing mix.

Sure, many marketers will use the excuse to invest into social network marketing as a brand exercise to build evangelists and advocates of their latest and greatest campaign. But the insightful managers and directors upstairs should also be looking for the hard pay off – to not assume that overal lift in sales must have resulted from the social network endeavors of the campaign. Better yet to understand what contributions to the campaign, specifically the social marketing tactics, can be monetized to drive new business and sales. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you a “Joe the Plumber”, or a new or small business owner needing to get Google to drive new business? Then grab a coffee and have a read as I plan to pack as much value into this post for you to get you started. And as always, any questions or comments, make a comment below or drop me a line.

Often in presentations and chats with small business owners, let’s call them the “Joe the Plumber” of the world , we tend to get so involved in all the wonderful things Joe could do for his small business to bring in new business from the web, that we tend to forgot Joe is just getting their feet wet in the internet marketing pool. In these cases, we need to re-address our approach and language to put the wonderful internet marketing ideas into plain simple english, tailored to Joe the Plumbers specific needs.

Over a coffee with Joe we may go on about what search engine marketing could do drive new business to his website, or what an email marketing program could to do create and sustain dialogue with his customers throughout the year. We could get in-depth about how a Facebook business strategy could help get Joe engage and interact with his customers or how a media / pr tactics will gain him free publicity offline, as well as online while at the same time feeding his SEO strategy.

But in the end, Joe is a business owner in Vancouver BC, he knows his business best, and nothing or very little about marketing over the Internet. His needs are simple. He needs new business, needs to get the most mileage from his budget (which is the size of a jar of jam), needs a powerful impact on the web, and needs guidance and trust from someone who can understand his business and his needs. Read the rest of this entry »