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What comes first the blog or the social media following? This is dependent on the individual. For example, some individuals already have a strong online presence through their social media accounts. They might already have a large following on their Instagram posting about lifestyle, and want to take it that next step further. They then create a blog geared towards lifestyle, so they are able to write more in depth posts.
I guess that is something to do with the way my brain is wired. I am not the front man, rock star I thought I could be when I first had guitar lessons. I’m more the guy who sits behind the piano, fully integrated into the sounds being made and lost in the full force of the music.
I came across this quote recently and it resonated with me, more so than any number of great quotes I have read in my time putting motivational magazines together.
Of course we are a long way from robots taking over the world and disobeying Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
When it comes to marketing, it is imperative to create a community around your brand. Whatever your brand stands for, you must run with it and create a following of dedicated customers along the way.
The team is fired up for the start of the new year. At this time of year, many people rethink where they sit in this world; life, work, health. I for one, have been doing a lot of that lately.
As I embark on the next phase of our global expansion, I am left with some thoughts on the people I employ and those who would best suit our company going forward.
While most B2B organizations have been fine tuning their marketing strategies for months, other's are only now just scrambling to put one together. At Marketing Eye, December and January is our highest inquiry month predominantly due to so many companies waiting until the last minute to develop their marketing strategies.
It's crazy because by leaving it to the last minute, you are already starting behind the 8-ball and giving your more organized competitors a head start.
Here are some things that you should be thinking about:
Internationally, we are in a fast-growth phases and this holiday has been spent working out how we will accomodate the extra sales and at the same time keep moving forward, leveraging our unique positioning.
We now have three inside sales executives in the company, with that set to double by the end of the first quarter next year. This investment has paid dividends as it allows marketing managers to focus on their jobs and not be tied down by talking to prospects that are warm and not hot. They no longer put together the proposals or the contracts, which are all done by our well trained inside sales executives.
While a sex tape is a good way to get media exposure for some; Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and alike - it's not the right way to get the type of media exposure to escalate your business's chance of being written about.
When I first started doing PR, I used to write a media release and fax it to a media outlet - all with varying results. The headline, like it is today, is worth it's weight in gold, and if you have a strong first paragraph, you may get that call back you have been waiting for.
That was soon followed up with 'pitching' on the telephone and depending on what mood the journalist was in or your ability to 'sell' a story to them, you either walked away with a published article or your press release was thrown in the trash can.
In 1998, the faxing part changed to emailing which was fantastic because it was a much faster and less tedious way of getting a media release out to journalists. It also was a much more environmentally friendly way to operate and allowed for changes to be made to ensure that each email sent out to a journalist was a one-to-one marketing piece rather than an everything to everyone, hit and miss style approach.
The lines blurred sometime in the last 10 years, but I don't know exactly when it happened.
Having started my first business at 25 years of age, specializing in technology marketing, I thought I had it all. A marketer who understood technology marketing and who could talk the talk which at that time seemed to be, the height of the dot com boom, the most lucrative marketing position one could hold.
Then of course, someone came along and started talking about company culture, and marketers took a turn to start embellishing the on-boarding process of new recruits, with a mixture of "people marketing" with "technology marketing" - and for a time, that was all the rage. It seemed to be the only thing people were talking about and marketers starting play a role in human resources, giving recruiters and in-house HR managers the tools to "sell their brands" like they were a front line sales executive needing to close the deal in order to reach their quotas.
Why your marketing agency needs a flat organizational structure
Jul 09, 2014 Written by Mellissah Smith
The next 12-months is going to be incredibly different for people who work at Marketing Eye. After years of working hard at establishing a product and service that is unsurpassed by industry standards, driven by technology, systems and processes, we are now working tirelessly on how to build the right culture going forward.
There have been many hit and misses and lots of unnecessary frustration, but finally I think as a team we have hit the nail on the headand I am about to test it to the enth degree.
Flat Organizational Structure
Weaning employees off hierarchy-driven decision making has been a test of both patience and perseverance. Gen-Y's have been told that they need leadership in order to be successful, yet some of the most successful companies in the world, like Google, are saying quite the opposite. Their investment in a flat organizational structure has not only shown dividends on the balance sheet, but it has created a workplace and culture that the world-over admires and respects.
For smaller companies that have an established organizational structure, driven largely by an entrepreneur, it is more difficult to adapt to a flat organizational structure with the primary reason being that both parties; the entrepreneur and the employees, find it difficult to let go.
I have been travelling the world growing "my small business" and have found that it is almost impossible to be the leader I would have hoped to be, living the life I do. I certainly am no role model in this department, nor do I follow the many books I have bought over time on"how to be a good leader" no matter how much I try but ultimately fail in my pursuit.
If nothing changes, nothing changes
We learn most from failures, and it is with these experiences that we equip ourselves to adapt our ways to do things better and hopefully learn from our lessons.
Recently, a client shared a sage piece of marketing advice, he said “If you have just $100 left in your advertising budget, your best investment is to use it to travel and share your story with your market face-to-face”. Today Marketing Eye put this advice to the test, with great success for one of our clients – Papa Gusto.
A marketing plan does not have to boast an exorbitant budget to be effective, nor does it have to be overly complex and multi-levelled to achieve your goals. We have proven this.
There have been many lessons I have learned this year; some the easy way and some the hard way.
The past six months have been exhausting. It has tested me in ways that I never imagined possible and at the same time, made me realize a few things about myself that will help shape the person I am moving forward.
I have learned:
Everyone at some time in their lives has felt that their world has curved in. Things become heavy, dark and almost impossible to keep afloat - but there is light at the end of the tunnel, if only we all can see it.
It's how we handle these experiences of difficulties that show our real character and ability to be resilient in the face of adversity now and in the future.
The Wolf of Wall Street was in many people's opinions a celebration of the bad life - drugs, sex, expensive toys, opulent homes and super expensive suits.
As we watched on as Leonardo DiCaprio spruiked, "The way I look at it, their money was better off in my pocket," many of us couldn't believe that world existed quite like that. But it does. And it's right here on our doorstep too.
