Community Marketing Blog

25 Reasons Why Nobody Comments On Your Blog And Posts

By Andrew Ballenthin October 20, 2009 President, Sol Solutions Biography

Connect.Follow.Network.

You are not alone in your quest for more comments. This problem is more of an epidemic than what you might first think. Blogs like “open mike” by retired Executive Chairman Mike Critelli of Pitney Bowes and world electronics giant Hitachi see an average of 0-5 comments a post. If voices for these multi-billion global businesses have these challenges it’s not unreasonable for the rest of us to see similar results.

5 1/2 Things I Am Not Going To Tell You About Social Media

	By Andrew Jenkins October 31, 2009 Volterra Consulting, Founder Biography	Connect.Follow.Network.

There has been so much written and recorded about social media in historic and social media channels.  The coverage in the various blogs and tweets runs the gamut between opportunism and relevance. You’ll find the 3, 5 or 10 things you need to know about twitter etiquette, making the most of twitter, how to drive traffic to you blog, how to get thousands of followers in a matter of days or weeks and, most importantly, how to make money using social media. 

5 Criteria For Qualifying Social Media Consultants

By Andrew Ballenthin October 20, 2009 President, Sol Solutions Biography

Connect.Follow.Network.

Despite having a time line that stretches over a decade it seems that it's only over the past few years that social media consultants and guru's have become popular new job titles. How is one to measure what their level of expertise is if their is no national or internationally standard for measuring quality standards and professional competency?

6 Tips for Creating a Successful Marketing Plan

Writing and implementing a marketing plan is essential for the success of any business. There are many resources available that define the basic elements of a marketing plan such as those provided by SCORE  and the SBA so this article does not attempt to review these elements. Rather, the author seeks to outline 6 tips for creating a successful marketing plan and impress upon the reader the importance of taking the time to plan and monitor your marketing efforts.

An Understated Hero: How LinkedIn Is A Global Village Of Goodwill

By Andrew Ballenthin October 20, 2009 President, Sol Solutions Biography

Connect.Follow.Network.

Free: job posting, surveys, networking, search engine profiling, news posting, supplier and client matching, group discussions and much more. Where? LinkedIn. For who? Over 50 million members. Wow... when you think about it LinkedIn has an online population greater than Australia or Spain all engaging in "free trade". That's a huge amount of commerce with no strings attached.

The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Social Media Practitioners – Seeing Your Way Through ‘The Cloud’

	By Ted Morris October 19, 2009 4ScreenMedia Biography	Connect.Follow.Network.

It’s clearly with respect to Steven Covey’s framework for managing one’s career – The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People that is the focus of this post. You might recall the four quadrants, notably, Covey’s observation that many of us spend too much time with “busy work” and not enough time practicing principle #2 - “beginning with the end in mind”. So here goes:

5 Reasons Why Nobody Comments On Your Blogs and Posts

By Andrew Ballenthin October 14, 2009 President, Sol Solutions Biography

Connect.Follow.Network.

The other day I was surprised to find a number of multi-billion and mega-million dollar companies that did not have much dialog on their blogs while I was doing my book research book on social media monetization. It was quite stirring to see companies that put effort into having a social media presence not having huge engagement. It's not what you would expect right?

A Community of Game Changers

This post is not about social media or marketing. It’s about community.

I have had the pleasure of being a part of an online community of game changers defying outmoded business models and testing new ones.

It began with the sharing of a doctoral thesis and turned into a community of 470+ people from 45 countries sharing ideas and contributing to a book on business models entitled Business Model Generation.  

The Truth about Winning New Clients: There is more than one "Right" Person

Advice about winning major account usually involves a couple of these myths: 

1. Knowledge-based businesses need an expert to talk to potential clients

2. Personal networking is the best way to get inside large companies

3. If you get to the right person, a deal can be done.

Website Optimization and Conversion Rate Killers: 4 Avoidable Mistakes

More and more businesses are realizing that to stay ahead of the competition they need to pay attention to, and devote resources to strategies and tactics for “website optimization.” The goal of website optimization is to ultimately drive more traffic to your website. However, I learned of some recent research which indicates that certain techniques of website optimization can also influence click through rates, conversion rates, and campaign response rates.

On October 5th and 6th, I attended MarketingSherpa’s  Annual B2B Marketing “Summit,” a gathering of some of the best and brightest minds in the marketing industry. One of the speakers, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, the Director of a company called Marketing Experiments, was a particularly engaging speaker. I found his presentation entitled “More Revenue for Less Money-The Top Five Ways To Increase the Performance of Your Lead Generation Program” very informative, so wanted to share some highlights.