Digital initiatives can create RABID customers

By Mark Helfen

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Communities of common interests have been around as long as humans. Maybe longer.

But the ever wider distribution of the web, supporting networks and social networking software have changed the dynamics, allowing the creation of digital communities that can have a large effect on the success of your business or organization. These "digital initiatives" (in the terminology of our speaker) can:

• Improve, or damage, your relationships with your customers.
• Improve positive images or your company, or strengthen negative images.
• Improve customer service and satisfaction.
• Give your customers a voice, which can supply innovative ideas that you might never have thought of. 
• Help create a population of not just customers, but committed, even "rabid" fans.

At Monday's (6/14/2010) SDForum Marketing SIG meeting, Dylan Thomas, Digital Director at Rassak Experience, discussed strategies for developing your community initiative plans, but spent most of his talk describing digital initiative successes and failures.

Don't outspend. Outthink! Power up your marketing programs with the power of communities

By Mark Helfen

Community initiatives can enhance your marketing communication program, make a small company look big, and help gain momentum for startups, all without big time or money commitments.

Even better, their impact can be measured, and they can even make money for your company.

Or so says Dylan Thomas. Thomas holds the title of Digital Director at Rassak Experience, a digital brand building and communications group. (My favorite quote from their web site - Don't outspend. Outthink!)

He will be speaking at next Monday's SDForum Marketing SIG (6/14) on the topic: Using Community Initiatives to Build Your Brand and Drive Business Results.

The current hot buzzword of social media is subset of community initiatives, which Thomas views with a "broad brush."  He includes Facebook, Twitter, email marketing, and proprietary community web sites in his overall idea of a digital community.

SIG TOPIC SURVEY - How should privacy be included in your marketing mix?

Your help is requested in an informal survey of SDForum Marketing SIG members.

Would you be interested in a SDForum Marketing SIG meeting on the the topic:

How should privacy be included in your marketing mix?

Some topic ideas:

• Is privacy, both policy and technology, a required part of your marketing mix?
• What do customers, both business-to-consumer, and business-to-business, expect for privacy policies and practices.
• What are some of the best privacy practices that work well, and what doesn't work.
• What are some of the changes coming down the road, and how can marketing programs, and marketing managers, be prepared.

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Any speaker suggestions would also be welcome. If there is interest expressed, either by commenting on the MarketingSIG blog, or by emailing me directly, we will try to schedule a session.

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Your suggestions requested and appreciated,

Mark Helfen


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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant. He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/markhelfen

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.helfen

follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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Not in any Job Description -- The Unwritten Role of Marketing

by: James Downey


Think Avatar, iPad, Pablo Picasso—there’s gold on the right side or your brain.

Inviting audience members to rethink their marketing careers using the right sides of their brains, Joe Cullinane, executive advisor, consultant, educator, and author of two books on sales and social media, told the May 10, 2010 meeting of the SDForum Marketing SIG at DLA Piper that even in left-brained Silicon Valley there is “a shift toward creativity and relationships.”

As a first step, Cullinane instructed the crowd of marketers, use your right brain to build a better relationship with your boss. The baby boom generation grew up in an analog world of televisions and transistor radios; Generation Y in a digital world of ubiquitous computing. When boss and employee hail from different generations, Cullinane said, the marketer must negotiate communication styles—is it a phone call or a text message.

A SDForum First?? Presentation by iPad

Right or left brained, our speaker next Monday still has the tech bug, and will try something unique. Maybe a first for SDForum, certainly a first for the Marketing SIG.

Speakers usually bring their own laptop as a way to show presentation materials in our meeting room. But Joe Cullinane will bring his shiny new Apple iPad as a way to show his presentation, with hardware to connect it to the rooms projection system.

And, in good right brain thinking, also his laptop as a backup. Just in case.