Creativity is Required

Most of us would agree that creativity is a valuable component to someone working in product management/ development or marketing. The ability to develop ideas that have a uniqueness would likely give an edge over competitors; however, according to Jay Nadgeman (2011) of Investment News, creativity is no longer a merely desired characteristic, but a requirement. Creativity allows for you to standout, whether you’re a business owner, marketing consultant, or product manager.

In Nadgeman’s article, he discusses the benefits of “interactive marketing.” Interactive marketing is described as the facilitation of dialogue between a business adviser and his client or prospective client. For example, Nadgeman recounts a story he heard about a business adviser throwing a party for clients that retire. The adviser would allow the client to pick the date and invite twelve friends. The party guests were thoroughly impressed by an adviser making such a kind gesture and desired an adviser who provides the same consideration. The unique idea would yield, on average, one new client per party (¶13-15).

Nadgeman continues by saying: “The key to developing a successful interactive experience is to use creative approaches, and focus on marketing to an individual rather than to the marketplace.” (¶18) I strongly agree with this statement. There is a significant amount of emphasis put on learning about your target market and developing plans to reach your demographic—which are obviously important; however, it is important to not slack on building relationships and creating communication with your client. The man referenced in the above story found success because his creative approach differentiated himself from every other marketing specialist and business consultant.

In conclusion, it is crucial to develop unique ideas and be persistent in developing them; allow your ideas to make you visible in the marketplace. I was only able to include a selection of the thought-provoking insights provided by Jay Nadgeman’s Investment News article. I encourage everybody to read his article in its entirety.

To view Jay Nadgeman’s article, click here.

Source

Nadgeman, J (2011). “For advisers, being creative is essential, not an option.” Investment News. Retrieved on April 12, 2011, from http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20110410/REG/304109986

Making Your Life Easier... One Application at a Time

At this point, the benefits of social media for businesses have been established. Social networking websites—like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn—allow businesses to advertise their products/services and update clients, or potential clients, on any developments within the company. It is not uncommon for a large organization to have a social-media-marketing department within their offices to maintain a presence on these popular platforms; however, that usually isn’t the case for smaller businesses. So that begs the question, how much time should a company spend status updating and tweeting? After all, effective social-media-marketing requires a substantial amount of time. Through my RSS feed, I came across an article by Matt Ferner (2011) from Practical Ecommerce regarding new applications that allow a company to consolidate their various social networking profiles into one interface.

Ferner recommends smaller companies consider purchasing applications like TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Yoono. These programs allow a company [or individual] to status update simultaneously—effectively cutting the time spent on social networking websites. For example, with the free application Ping.fm, I would be able to update my Facebook status, tweet, and schedule in advance my next update all at the same time (¶11-¶15). Many of these applications are available both on your computer and mobile device. There are more advanced programs—like CoTweet Enterprise and SpredFast—that are available at a charge; however these applications support an unlimited number of profiles and have features that allow you to search Twitter and Facebook for discussion about your brand (¶5-¶7).

In ending, if your company is building a presence via social networking platforms, you may want to consider one of the above-mentioned applications to save time and minimize frustration. My personal recommendation is TweetDeck—it is free, user friendly, and has basically the same features as the expensive programs. That said, I encourage you to read Ferner’s article in full to determine what features you would require in  “social-media-management software” for it to be beneficial to you or you company (¶2).

To read Ferner’s article “15 services to manage your social media activity” please click here.

Source

Ferner, M (2011). “15 services to manage you social media activity.” Practical Ecommerce. Retrieved on April 1, 2011, from http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/2688-15-Services-to-Manage-Your-Social-Media-Activity