Don’t Be the Restaurant No One Wants to Eat At Because It Is Empty June 6, 2011

You are walking around an unfamiliar neighborhood with a couple of friends. You are on your way to a party or perhaps just a movie. But you have a bit of time and decide to stop to eat dinner first. You can’t be too choosy, but it appears you have two options. From the outside both look clean and well maintained. The lights are working. From the menus posted in the windows, both seem to offer some appetizing choices. And neither you nor your friends are opposed to either due to personal tastes. But, there seems to be something off about one of them. You can’t quite put your finger on it at first, but then you realize what it is. One of them appears, for all practical purposes, to be empty, save the one out-of-place guy in the corner you see while peering through the window, while the other is overflowing with patrons waiting to be seated. Which do you choose?

Getting Down to Business with Constant Contact, Social Media, and Daniel Nuccio May 31, 2011

Last month I had the opportunity to attend Constant Contact’s “Get Down to Business” seminar in Chicago. Not only was I able to meet with a variety of people working in social media, or at least implementing it for their businesses, as well as see presentations from several top people in the industry, but I was also able to attend a special lunch with Steve Robinson, Gail Goodman, and a small handful of respected guests and loyal Constant Contact customers.

Social Media for the Intermediate User March 22, 2011

Not too long ago I attended a social media seminar hosted by Constant Contact and presented by their regional director for Illinois, Steve Robinson at an Ing Direct Cafe in Downtown Chicago. Despite spending a little time brushing up on some basics, this was not Social Media 101, but an interactive discussion for intermediate users on how to use social media [...]

6 Reasons 2 Use an Email Marketing Service January 15, 2011

You can professionally brand your emails with your company colors, images, logo, etc.. You do not share your contact lists with everyone on your contact list. The odds of your message being mistaken for spam are greatly decreased. You can send your message to thousands of people at once. Doing so automatically puts you in [...]

7 Touches and 3 Emails: 2 Important Numbers for Every Email Marketing Campaign January 14, 2011

Last week I attended a presentation on Constant Contact given by Steve Robinson. Much of it was a refresher. Much of it clarified things I was a bit fuzzy on. However there were two numbers that really stuck out for me. The first was that it takes about seven touches with a prospect before a sale will occur, ideally through a combination of mediums including social media, email marketing, sales calls, advertisements, face to face meetings, and so on. The second number was that when contacting people through an email marketing service like Constant Contact, you only get two or three opportunities to prove the value of your newsletter before a contact will stop opening it, opt-out, or, worst of all, mark you as a spammer.

Here We Are December 1, 2010

Here we are…at the beginning of the 12th month of the calendar. Boy has 2010 flown by. It seems like just yesterday when I was writing about the start of a new decade (which is actually this year, but I’m not going to start that conversation again). So much has happened in our world and in the world over the past 11 months. It seems as though the economy has taken a turn for the better, thanks in large part to many of my friends who own small to mid-sized businesses. To paraphrase George Bailey from my favorite movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, it is the small to mid sized business who does most of the living and working and purchasing and dying in this world. We didn’t need a bailout, we just needed our entrepreneurial spirit to help us continue to grow in tougher times.

Let the Holiday Season, and Games, Begin!!! November 30, 2010

The Holiday season seems to come earlier every year. There was a time when you typically didn’t see Christmas displays at stores, or hear songs about sleigh bells playing at Starbucks, or catch a commercial starring Santa until right around Thanksgiving , but now it seems like the stores are putting up decorated pine trees and garland the same day they take down the spider webs and Jack O’Lanterns.

So Now We Have Video Blogs November 12, 2010

After months of listening to our social media director speak of the value of having them, FINALLY Randolph Sterling, Inc. has produced some videos for the website and our blogs. There has been much discussion as to how to do these videos and at what expense. Do we do them ourselves or do we hire a professional video production company to do it for us? Our feeling was that we would start with the flip cam, knowing that there are definitely better quality options out there but at least getting us involved in the media rather than taking what would have been months to interview video production guys, etc.

“The Accidental Billionaires”: The True Story of the Founding of Facebook? November 8, 2010

Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires: The Founders of Facebook reads like a novel, but allegedly tells the “true story” of Facebook’s early years. It covers much of the same territory as David Fincher’s film, The Social Network, for which it served as source material, but goes into more detail about things like what exactly is a Harvard Final Club, why it was better for Facebook to take money from VCs early on rather than sell advertising space, what made Facebook different from MySpace and Friendster and The Harvard Connection/ConnectU, and what was in the contracts Mark Zuckerberg’s former partner signed that resulted in him losing his share of the company.

“Catfish”…the Other Facebook Movie October 18, 2010

Most of us when we think of “The Facebook Movie,” likely think of David Fincher’s The Social Network, based on the controversial book, The Accidental Billionaires, by Ben Mezrich. It spent two weeks at the top of the box office, and has generated a considerable amount of Oscar buzz, and rightfully so.