This is a different take on “cause marketing” – similar to nonprofit marketing but more frequently employed by corporations that are for-profit, using a cause as a method of communicating. This marketing blogger decided to illustrate the importance of split testing a campaign (A/B testing). To begin with, the results were impressive: thes experiment improved the homless man’s earnings by over 100% over several days.

The blogger began his analysis of the homeless man’s campaign by noticing that his signage was in need of an overhaul. It was brown cardboard and largely featured “Hi, I’m Keith” with a number of other details too small to read in passing. In addition, the sign had no major call to action.

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Open Forum consistently offers great articles and advice for small businesses on marketing, including this excellent article on basic Twitter tips. In summary, the article covers a few basic ideas you should be aware of before setting off onto your Twitter path:

1. DO have a personality, talk like a person, share stories.
2. DO NOT get carried away or tweet too far off topic.
3. DO share links, photos, and videos.
4. DO NOT spend too much time retweeting customers saying nice things about you. Many people simply unfollow those accounts.
5. DO engage with customers over customer service concerns — only if you think you can provide sufficient, consistent, and excellent care.
6. DO NOT negotiate or try to service an unhappy customer in public. There’s generally no reason for the rest of the world to see you discussing an issue they’re having with your service.

(photo: 7son75)

One of the biggest issues for small business with a web 2.0 strategy is finding a way to unite them all and simplify the updating process.

Hootsuite is more than a twitter client.  In the video below, I’ll go over why I love Hootsuite so much and how I leverage it to not only update all my statuses on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but to also keep track of click throughs and trends.

Being a part of an “award-winning” firm is something to showcase and feature in your company’s presentations to potential clients. While we’re all overwhelmed with award shows in every possible category, the benefits of being able to point to your awards is invaluable. Having awards makes it easier to sell your business – you have already convinced a jury that you are worthwhile and this neutral party is sometimes the nudge your clients need to validate your services. But how do you take your work from being worthy of entering a competition, to being worthy of an award?

Recently Karen Albritton judged the Public Relations Society of America’s Silver Anvil Awards and wrote this excellent article with a few great tips on how to succeed in winning awards and what a judge is looking for. A few of the highlights from the article include:

• Research matters. Great campaigns begin with insight and insight comes from research. Lack of research was the most pervasive challenge for the entries I judged.
• Media impressions alone aren’t results. Award-worthy campaigns deliver a business or an organizational impact. Most clients are clamoring for real metrics and will be delighted to have their agency come to them with ideas on how to measure business impact.
• You can’t win on execution alone. Most campaigns today integrate multiple communications channels including media relations, events, collateral materials, social media and even advertising.

• Ideas over tactics. There is no substitute for a big idea — a big idea derived from an insight into your audience that is linked to strategy. Understand the power of an idea and how to package it.

(photo nasa hq photo)