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So what exactly does an Online Community Manager do? What type of skills do they need and how many hats do they wear? Dion Hinchcliffe’s article titled: Community management: The ‘essential’ capability of successful Enterprise 2.0 efforts will give you the skinny. For a snapshot understanding, view his infographic, below.
BroadBased CEO Jan Korb was one of four marketing professionals who participated in a panel discussion Feb. 19 at UNF as part of the university’s Marketing Expo. The discussion, sponsored by the UNF Marketing Society, was titled “Technology Affecting Marketing.” Of the topic, Korb said: “Technology is doing more than just affecting marketing. I think they are in the back seat making out.”
In March, Korb and PR Director Maria Coppola will be participating as panelists at Flagler College’s Communication Week on the topic of Participation Marketing.
So your company has experimented with social media over the last year and you “get it.” Now you’re ready to commit to a program and you want to do it right. How do you use your internal and external resources most efficiently? Are you ready to jump in but prefer some guidance before the training wheels come off?
BroadBased has created a research-based protocol to help you determine what social media channels are right for your organization. We’ll guide you through the planning, content development, launch and measurement of a social media marketing program.
“New tools are being created at an incredible speed and quantity,” says Sean Collins, Web Designer for BroadBased Communications. “Do you want to integrate your blog into an information highway that feeds your other channels? No problem. Have you been hoping for a tool that allows multiple internal departments to contribute to your social media feed? No problem,” says Collins.
Social media is just one component to an overall marketing and public relations plan. BroadBased follows a comprehensive process to identify each company’s external needs and internal resources. “Just as with a traditional marketing strategy, there is no cookie-cutter answer that fits every company,” says BroadBased CEO Jan Korb. “So we developed our own process, similar to the one we use for creating traditional marketing and PR strategies. This process is a logical guide to social media strategy development.”
Similar to traditional marketing and PR strategies, we begin with an audit of your resources and needs. This guides us in determining which social media channels will be the best complement to your existing marketing and PR programs. Then we review your goals, expectations, internal resources and budget before making our final recommendation.
Email jkorb@bbased.com to receive a Social Media Marketing Questionnaire, the first step to implementing your custom social media solution.
Richard Willich, the CEO and Chairman of MDI Holdings has fast become one of our area’s most watched CEOs. Not only is he the CEO of the largest employer in St. Johns County, he is also a historian, a veteran, a philanthropist and a man of deep spiritual faith. Having not been in the area as long as some of our most watched companies, he has often been misunderstood and/or relatively unknown in our market for his accomplishments and giving.
Recognizing how versatile the Web is for conveying ideas and sharing points of view, client Richard Willich asked BroadBased to develop a contemporary site reflecting his background and current perspectives.
Led by Web Designer Sean Collins, the team incorporated an array of narratives, documents and photos from Willich’s life experiences. Readers learn first-hand about Willich as a decorated U.S. Marine during the Vietnam era, through college, law school, pilot training, in business and his numerous philanthropic activities.
The public relations team at BroadBased also works for Richard to communicate his news to traditional and new media. Complementing the campaign is an ongoing media relations plan, a new media plan including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, making it easy to connect with Richard and learn about his projects.
The site will be constantly updated with his philanthropic projects and other news.
Visit www.richardwillich.com for a fascinating account of this patriot, businessman and conservative activist. He is certainly someone you should know!
Facility Automation Solutions (formerly W.W. Gay Facility Automation) needed a comprehensive B2B Web site to concisely present the company’s capabilities in implementing “smart” building operating systems. The company has long played a role in ensuring comfort, energy conservation and operating efficiency in many of Northeast Florida’s most high-profile institutions. From copywriting to creative services, BroadBased led the effort to bring clarity to a complex array of services.
“The entire team at BroadBased took the time to understand our business and the messages we needed to convey through our Web site, then applied that understanding through their creative abilities,” said Rick Daber, Vice President of FAS. “The result is a Web site that has become a very key element of our corporate identity.”
To view the site, go to www.jaxcontrols.com.
If you’re looking for a good overview of marketing trends for the coming year, you’d do well to check out the article “Strategies That Sell” in 904 Magazine’s December 2009 issue. The article provides a virtual roundtable of opinions from businesses in and around Northeast Florida — printing, retail, medical, media buying, direct mail and accounting.
BroadBased’s own Jan Korb and Maria Coppola weigh in on Marketing Planning and Public Relations.
You can read the article in full at this link beginning on page 29.
Paper Retriever, the recycling arm of AbitibiBowater, North America’s largest manufacturer of newsprint, selected BroadBased Public Relations to lead the PR and community relations efforts when they entered the Jacksonville market in October.
“We were really excited to introduce Paper Retriever to Jacksonville in an especially meaningful way,” said Maria Coppola, Director of Public Relations at BroadBased. “Our team, which includes consultant Mike Tolbert, facilitated introductions that resulted in a city-wide partnership between Paper Retriever, the City of Jacksonville and Keep Jacksonville Beautiful. This partnership will help our community recycle paper conveniently, while helping to raise money for non-profit groups at the same time.”
“Paper Retriever provides fundraising opportunities by supplying distinctive paper collection bins to local non-profits at no cost,” said Reggie Brown, Area Manager for AbitibiBowater. “Bins are placed in highly visible areas at schools, churches and even city parks, and the sponsoring organization receives payment for the recyclable paper it collects. Everybody wins — anyone with an available six-foot by six-foot space that is easily accessible and visible to the public can host a bin. And the proceeds can benefit a non-profit of choice or Keep Jacksonville Beautiful, the city’s litter fighting commission.”
Upcoming events include a large-scale fundraiser for Keep Jacksonville Beautiful at area Winn-Dixie store locations. Even if you can’t host a bin, you can help “keep Jacksonville beautiful” by dropping by any location and recycling your magazines, catalogs, newspapers, junk mail and office paper.
It’s easy to obtain a Paper Retriever bin for your business or nonprofit organization. For more information, email Maria at Maria@bbased.com.
Paper Retriever is offering special cash incentives if you call and reserve your bin by the end of 2009 — call 904-598-9545 today for the extra green just in time for the holidays!
Making your 2009 marketing dollars work hard for you is more important than ever, and we can help your chances of marketing success by developing an integrated marketing plan.
A marketing plan is developed to meet your specific business goals, be they increasing overall brand awareness, driving consumers to your Web site or developing media relations that result in news articles. Your plan should identify your audiences, geographic reach, outlets (print, online, radio, direct mail) and objectives for your marketing activities. Projected ROI should also be included, as well as agreed upon methods of determining the success of your efforts.
A well-written plan will integrate your marketing or brand awareness initiatives through all outlets and offer strong guidance throughout the year. This is very helpful in that your careful planning will discourage ad-hoc marketing decisions that may not be in line with your business goals or target markets.
If you are interested in exploring the benefits of your own plan, please call Jan at 904.398.7279.
One of the important features of a BroadBased marketing plan is that we identify Cost Per Thousand (CPM). CPM is how much it costs to reach any 1,000 (M) people in your target. Knowing the the CPM can be of great assistance when determining if a particular outreach “costs too much.”
Focus groups are a very helpful marketing tool that we don’t think are used enough. We asked Nancy Ulrich, president of Concepts in Focus, a top-rated Northeast Florida research facility in Orange Park, if she could set expectations for a company considering adding focus groups to their 2009 research arsenal.
“The very act of sitting together and interacting with both a skilled moderator and a mixed group of people stimulates new ideas and information that is hard to come by in any other way,” said Ulrich. “Typically, a group is held in a facility with a one-way mirror and recording devices (audio and video), allowing the observers to participate in a secluded setting. Non-traditional settings may work just as well if there is minimal need for observation and quality recordings.”
Have you ever wondered how your front-desk or customer service staff interacts with patients or customers when you are not near? Or have you wondered what the customer service experience is like at a competing office or store? Ulrich suggests that a mystery shopper or shop-along program may be exactly what you need to determine how you stack up against your competition.
If you are interested in the answer to any of these questions about your own product or service, then maybe it’s time you consider allocating part of your marketing budget to research that can truly provide you with answers to what’s working, and what isn’t.
According to a recent study by Fellows of the Society for New Communications Research, press releases – once the paper-based province of PR professionals – are now primarily online vehicles important to PR and marketing professionals alike, but for different reasons.
PR professionals surveyed place more importance on announcing news and influencing thought leaders about their clients as goals for press releases. Marketers surveyed cited press releases as tools in reaching consumers directly, reaching bloggers and other new social media, and search engine optimization (SEO) for Web sites.
The findings of the article aside, some PR and marketing professionals believe the press release is dead, with each new means of social media a nail in its coffin.
“Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs have taken away most of the spotlight from the press release,” says Maria Coppola, BroadBased’s PR director. “But in my experience, every time I pitch a story, the first thing out of a reporter or editor’s mouth is ‘Do you have something to send me?’ They still need that guidance and information a press release can provide. We’ve found that our biggest successes in generating meaningful articles for our clients continues to be the direct introduction of a reporter or editor through phone calls and meetings. Press releases are helpful, but are certainly no replacement for good old-fashioned relationship-based pitching.”
