March 20, 2013

When a crisis hits, how graceful is your response?

Photo courtesy of Kid Gibson (Creative Commons)

After things go wrong, authenticity can set it right

Something’s always going to go wrong. Murphy’s law demands it. It is your mandatory tithe to the universe. This is true about everything.

Perhaps character is what shows when things go wrong, and it’s what you do when things don’t go right that defines you. It’s never the end of the world. In fact, sometimes really messing up can initiate a valuable interaction that wouldn’t have ever happened were the mistake avoided. You’ll always be remembered more for how you handle something than for what you did in the first place. Continue reading →

March 19, 2013

10 top tools for creating infographics & visualizations

An interactive visualization at Datavisualization.ch.

Explain complex concepts with stunning visuals

Guest post by Miranda Rensch
Senior Product Manager, SEOmoz

Communicating visually is one of the most effective ways to explain complex concepts and relationships. It can be a great way to explain your services or products and create valuable site content. I often use diagrams and whiteboarding to communicate new features and concepts internally with my team.

Below is a list of tools that you can use to create visualizations or simply to communicate visually with your fellow staff members. Enjoy, and feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments! Check out these tools for creating simple infographics and data visualizations.

Piktochart: Create simple visualizations

1Piktochart is a Web-based tool that has six decent free themes (and a whole bunch more for the paid version) for creating simple visualizations. You can drag and drop different shapes and images, and there is quite a bit of customization available. You can also add simple line, bar, and pie charts using data from CSV (a data table or spreadsheet) or enter it manually. You can export to PNG and JPG in either print or Web quality. Note that with the free version, you get a small Piktochart watermark on the bottom of the PNG / JPG downloads. Continue reading →

March 18, 2013

Why the client covenant begins early on

oneway
Photo courtesy of Matt Peoples (Creative Commons)

How taking direction can lead to business success

Target audience: Marketing professionals, business owners, students, educators.

How highly do you rate the ability to take direction from your clients? As communication strategists, we’re often not the ones following but giving direction. To our clients, to our teams, to the people we supervise (sometimes they are cross-functional teams within the same organization, sometimes they span organizations).

The whole thing about being a team player, and “there is no I in team”… yeah, well, that’s a phrase we all pay lip service to, but I think most of us would rather be leading the team as opposed to letting someone else do it, if we’re really being honest. Continue reading →

March 14, 2013

Facebook paid sponsored content meets you only halfway

Photo courtesy of diTii (Creative Commons)

Increase your breadth and depth for greater marketing power

After reading Disruptions: As User Interaction on Facebook Drops, Sharing Comes at a Cost by Nick Bilton in the New York Times (and Facebook‘s detailed fact check), I thought I would spend $21 for your amusement. I would sponsor three Facebook posts.

For my first, I sponsored a post rather spontaneously and organically to see if anyone might want to join my virtual rowing team, Team Grotto, and join a virtual regatta, the 2013 World Erg Challenge. Why not, right? Continue reading →

March 13, 2013

Startup turns a smartphone into a smart toy

Unveiled at Launch, Ubooly shows power of sensor technology (and hugs)

Target audience: Entrepreneurs, technologists, designers, marketing professionals, businesses, toy manufacturers, parents.

At last week’s Launch Festival in San Francisco, I spent a few minutes talking with Carly Gloge, the founder and CEO of a new startup called Ubooly. They make cuddly plush toys that you can personalize and interact with through your iPhone or iPod Touch. (You stick the device inside the toy.) It’s for kids ages 4 to 9.

Carly gave one of the more dynamic presentations on stage at Launch, so I caught up with her after her demo. Ubooly is out “to make toys smart,” she said. Smart devices, starting with the iPhone and iPod Touch, have become “so powerful compared to anything else that has been put in toys. So we thought, let’s merge the two.”

Voilà! The Ubooly (pronounced OO-buh-lee, which I finally pronounced right by the end of the video). What’s cool about this is:

• Children form an emotional bond with these toys that they’ll carry with them for years;

• Parents get to program the toy via the online Ubooly Lab, starting with setting up their child’s favorite color, animal and sports. From there, the parents can activate educational packs that seem best suited to their little one.

Ubooly launched with six packs — written by elementary school teachers and comedy writers — and will expand to 20 by the end of the month, Carly says.

Watch, download or embed the 4-minute video on Vimeo Continue reading →

March 12, 2013

5 apps that do the marketing work for you

Photo courtesy of noeliamarejo via Creative Commons

Reach a broader audience with the help of these marketing apps

Guest post by Megan Totka

Developing and executing strong marketing campaigns takes a lot of work. In large corporations, entire departments are devoted to this task. For small businesses and sole proprietors, marketing tasks often fall on employees or business owners that wear other hats, too. There is literally not enough time in the workday to accomplish all the promotional tasks that large and small companies wish they could achieve, especially considering the vast outreach opportunities the Internet age presents.

What if I told you that there is a way to do less work but actually reach more people with your company news, products and services? Interested? While I can’t advise you on the best ways to find more money in your budget, I can offer some suggestions developed by others that will give your business a smart marketing advantage. Continue reading →