Book of Interest: Media: From Chaos to Clarity

Full disclosure first, I have not read "Media:  From Chaos to Clarity" by Judy Ungar Franks so what you are about to read is not a review.

What triggered me to post about her book is a fascinating article I caught in the recent edition (April 19) of the Chicago Reader: "What traditional media can learn from Betty White, Old Spice, and Joan of Arc." 

I was intrigued to say the least by Franks's comments to Michael Miner's (author of the article) questions.  For example, "We need a few simple tools and one big picture," she writes.  And goes on further to say, "We need a great story to tell (across multiple channels), we need an engaged consumer and we need an open media architecture that enables consumers to accelerate content across media channels and social networks."

Sounds like something all business owners should address in order to get and keep digital customers. 

Read the entire article here.  Check out her book where she makes sense of a messy media world here.

Blog Post of Interest: Social Media Marketing

As social media platforms such as Google+ and Facebook continue to evolve and grow, how do you, as a business owner, stay focused and up to date on what's relevant?

The reality of web marketing is that almost all of it happens on platforms that are owned by others. Platform owners, such as Facebook or Google, have provided environments where some things are easy to do, some things are much harder to do, and some things simply can't be done. Even tougher for marketers is that these systems are constantly changing ...

Read: Your Marketing Can Keep Pace with Facebook and Google

Survey of Interest: Digital Marketing -- From Web Sites To Wikis

A global survey shows that marketers already regard digital tools as very important for advertising and for managing sales and service—but frequently don’t use them. Why? Although respondents to this McKinsey study are applying both established and Web 2.0 technologies to reach customers at every stage of decision making, they complain about a shortage of skilled people to run online vehicles and about a lack of metrics to assess them. Learn “How companies are marketing online” and how they expect to be doing so in 2010. Highly recommend. It requires a quick (free) registration but it's worth it.

And if you would like a simpler version to McKinsey's analysis, try this one on for size. It's a story, "Who Moved My Client Base?," about how a business owner who is faced with a slowing small business uses social media to turn things around and grow his business by tapping into a global client base. See if it strikes a chord with you. Feel free to comment and forward the story to whoever you think might benefit.