| Fall 2011 |
Friends:
As the end of 2011 approaches, many marketers are busy planning for the year ahead. To help you in this process, we've created a checklist of five easy ways to get a jumpstart on 2012 in our feature article. It includes why a review of your messaging, SEO, social media, lead generation and media strategy is timely now, especially during the holiday lull between Thanksgiving and New Year's.
We hope you enjoy this issue!
Regards,
Peter
@peterbaron
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That Holiday Lull: Five Easy Ways to Get a Jump on 2012
Ahh, that stretch between Thanksgiving and New Year's.
Fewer meetings. Less travel. Not so many calls and emails. Time to kick back and …
get in some quiet, thoughtful reflection before your marketing effort is in full swing again.
It's the perfect time to take a deep breath and do some important plotting that can give you a leg up on your competitors in the new year.
For starters, how's social media working for you? Have a little fun with this one, a combination of web surfing and serious research. Take some time to see what your competitors are doing on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and check what their leaders may have profile-wise on Google+. Are you leaving them in the dust? Or is some competitor doing something that makes you take notice? That might make your customers take notice? Good ideas can come from anywhere. (For insight into some free media-monitoring services, read Justin Rubner's blog post, "Did Someone Mention Social Search?").
Speaking of good ideas, step back a bit and think about your messaging across all media. Did what you're saying change in effective ways during 2011? Do you really want to keep saying the same things in 2012? Did marketplace dynamics shift in any way that creates new opportunities to connect with your audience in fresh ways?
And if there are new opportunities to connect with your audience, is your SEO keyword list sufficiently up-to-date to help make it happen? What might prospects be searching for now that they weren't a year ago? And really, how long has it been since your last, really serious SEO keyword list update? If you're doing pay-per-click, don't forget to update those keywords, too.
Unless you're lucky enough to have an offering so popular that the sales team has trouble taking all the orders, lead generation is probably a hot topic right now. How did your lead generation programs perform in 2011? What worked? What didn't? What might help get that sales team so busy it does have a hard time keeping up in 2012?
Back to the most basic of basics, is it time to adjust your media strategy? Publications are putting out their 2012 media calendars as you read this, and the best of them are adjusting their coverage in meaningful ways. Take a look at those calendars – is there anything you can do to take advantage of shifting content?
Depending on your marketing mix, there are probably additional areas that could use some big thinking right now. The point is, we all get so caught up in day-to-day must-do's for most of the year that it's really hard to find time to reflect, assess, and let big thoughts bubble up. The easier schedule most of us have between the holidays is the perfect time to correct that.
And hey, if you'd like a little help, just give us a call. We'll even bring the holiday candy.
Venture Atlanta 2011
Venture Atlanta, Georgia's premier investor conference, is attended by investors from across the country, Georgia entrepreneurs, senior technology executives and others who are interested in emerging companies. Held each October, the conference is attended annually by more than 650 individuals.
We attended both days of the conference held at the Georgia Aquarium and listened attentively to 38 companies each give a 6-minute pitch for investment capital.
A good recap of the conference by the Atlanta Business Chronicle's Urvaksh Karkaria can be found here.
Some of the companies that caught our attention:
Hot Startups:
Social Fortress – Protects your website
Soneter – Cool way to meter water usage in apartments
Soket – Platform to ease how businesses interact with patrons online
Idea String – Curating and managing ideas for enterprises
RappidApp – Fast mobile App development for non-techies
PinDrop – Stops phone fraud
Verdeeco – Way to mine the tons of data on the US electric grid
TripLingo – Language learning made fun
Lift Retail – Boosts impulse purchasing in retail stores
Merlin Mobility – Uber cool augmented reality way of doing assembly directions
CodeGuard – Snapshot of your website so you can restore after a problem
Hot early-stage companies:
SimpleC – Help for dementia and Alzheimer's patients and caregivers
Racemi – Cloud migration tools
Velocity – Better way to manage oncology images
NanoLumens – Huge, flexible, flat panel displays
Contact at Once! – Online chat solution
Vertical Acuity – Discover and publish content from any website
Snapfinger – Restaurant remote ordering and payment site
Global Reach: Branding Without Borders
Carabiner Communications recently joined a global community of like-minded, independent technology PR consultancies, founded by Johnson King, one of Europe's most trusted and respected technology PR agencies, with offices in the UK, France and Germany. The community, called Global Reach, consists of over 35 tech PR agency offices covering 50 countries worldwide, giving us the ability to partner with and refer our clients to people who are completely plugged into the local technology market. With these partners, we can deliver best-in class PR campaigns as part of a wider, fully managed global program.
If your organization needs any international representation – whether for ongoing work or a significant project – we have the vetted resources of technology PR firms to help.
Client News Corner
Search Discovery: Giving Marketers Direct Control of Advanced Web Analytics
Search Discovery has long provided search-marketing support to such noted enterprises as Dow Chemical Company, NBA, Chick-fil-A, Toyota, Cox Enterprises, NASCAR.com, Universal Music, PGA Tour and more. The company has entered a new phase with its recent release of Satellite, a JavaScript tag management system that gives marketers direct access to advanced analytics without requiring technical expertise.
JavaScript tags record how site visitors in general make use of links, buttons, menus, players, etc. within web pages, tracking the behaviors that precede such desirable actions as clicking "Buy Now," as well as such undesirable actions as exiting the site. Armed with this intelligence, marketers can direct far more meaningful changes to web sites than simply updating copy and images.
To date, however, deploying tags has required complex HTML programming. Marketers who want to leverage tags typically must work through IT departments that have far higher priorities than gathering marketing intelligence.
Satellite addresses this by putting tag management directly in the hands of marketing professionals, offering a browser-based, WYSIWYG interface in which a marketer who knows nothing about JavaScript or HTML can specify what interactions to track on each web page and assess virtually any aspect of user experience. As such, Satellite is a game-changer for smart marketers seeking to better connect with their audiences via digital marketing.
Carabiner Spotlight: Stephanie Thomas – Shifting into High Gear
Stephanie cycling at Brasstown
Bald, the highest natural point
in the state of Georgia.
At the age of 10, Stephanie Thomas fell in love…with her bicycle. From the moment she first took off riding her very own 10-speed bike, she's been going places. From her career path to her community activities and even her love of competition, Stephanie has constantly challenged herself and shifted things into high gear as she's progressed ahead since she was that young cyclist riding her first bike.
"Outside of work, I'd rather be on my bike than anywhere else," said Stephanie of her passion for the open road. Born in Fairfield, Connecticut, she now lives in Atlanta and serves as an account director and writer with Carabiner Communications.
For Stephanie, cycling offers the perfect blend of competition and exercise. She's come a long way from riding as a child, and in 2001, she completed her first 100-mile race in Tucson, Arizona benefiting the Lymphoma/Leukemia society. This summer alone, Stephanie put her racing into high gear and completed six 100-mile rides, or 'centuries' as they refer to it in the cycling world.
Speaking of ratcheting things up a notch, Stephanie became a member of Red Cross' Disaster Action Team (DAT) following Hurricane Katrina. Touched by the disaster, Stephanie jumped in her car and drove to the Red Cross headquarters to begin volunteering immediately in their offices. Then in 2009, she completed additional training to qualify for responding to disasters in the field. Most recently, she was dispatched to New Jersey for two weeks to provide disaster relief to those affected by Hurricane Irene.
The Great Smoky Mountains serve
as a perfect riding location for
Stephanie and her husband Greg.
"Our job was to stay in the shelters and help people figure out what to do next," said Stephanie. "We were there to help keep them warm, dry and fed. It was very tough and depressing, but it's something I feel strongly about doing."
Her career path also demonstrates her desire to keep moving and building on foundations she has laid. Prior to embarking on her career in communications, Stephanie taught English at a small private school in Japan to people of all ages - from toddlers to adults. After two years in Japan, she moved back to Atlanta. Armed with her master's degree in applied linguistics from Georgia State University, she taught English at both her alma mater and at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Since then, Stephanie has continued full speed ahead in her career. She quickly switched gears and moved into communication. As a public relations account director and writer, her expertise and talent has continued to accelerate many of Carabiner's client successes.
Stephanie and her husband, Greg celebrated their 12-year anniversary in October. When they are not biking or enjoying one of their many hobbies together, you can find them at their mountain retreat in North Carolina. The two reside in the Atlanta neighborhood of Buckhead with their dog, Lefty and cat, Clyde.
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