Hello there!
Just reaching out to to let you know that I'm still freelancing and have been working with a number of interesting companies lately including:
Get Satisfaction - a community platform provider that brings people-powered support to your customers wherever they are online.
Support.com - a subscription based tech support service that connects tech users to tech experts in the US and Canada.
TeamWorks - a worker-owned housecleaning cooperative in the Bay Area.
Of course, I always have room for more. I hope you'll continue to think of me if you have or hear of a need for contracted digital marketing strategy and services.
Cheers!
Bonnie
Having made my living as a freelancing contractor for the better part (and the worst part) of the past four years, I can only attest to its many, many benefits for both the employer and the employed alike and express a fervent hope that it truly becomes more common. It saves time, energy and money (no transportation costs! no commute!) and in my experience, contributes to a more agile marketing practice and helps companies stay nimble.
Very interesting podcast on the Future of Work from PRI as a follow up to a recent Time Magazine cover story exploring among other things, generational shifts in the needs and demands of labor.
Apparently Alvin Toffler was on the right track as far back as 1971 when in Future Shock he predicted a future workplace not of bureaucracies, but ad-hocracies. Of loose, impermanent associations between highly specialized individual contributors.
Facebook's arrival as a lifestyle brand was cemented the moment Zuckerberg appeared on Oprah. Having been on Facebook for several years as an Internet marketing professional, one can't help but notice the sudden barrage of old high school friends (stay at home moms) having suddenly found me on Facebook. A noticeable shift in the FB demographic has taken place in the last six months.
Which makes the brand now part of popular culture, properly cited by Steve Rubel as the key motivation for recent advertiser interest in Facebook. Advertisers from Palm to Sprint are plugging Facebook in TV spots, aligning themselves with the social media icon that touches 200 million everyday.
I've been wondering what the Twitter value proposition to me is for some time. I get what Twitter is, and yes, I Tweet, but I've never been entirely sure why Twitter should matter to me. Apparently, many share in my quandry, says Silicon Valley, The Harvard Business Review, Nielsen and others.
By a number of measures, Twitter's metrics look pretty dismal. User engagement is low and customer retention even lower. Numbers like these beg the question, what is the real and compelling value to a business or consumer in using the Twitter application?
Even the CEO says what he's shooting for in a relationship with his audience is addiction.
The NYT makes data-driven marketing look like the hottest new trend. The article title, Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise. puts to mind one of the first pieces of marketing copy I worked on for an optimization SaaS provider several years ago: Test. Adapt. Repeat. or somesuch was our pithy copy describing what we helped marketers to do.
Love the piece’s Wall Street meets Madison Avenue description of the future of data-driven marketing. Perhaps we geeks who get giddy over data will soon have our time in the limelight!
While the Industrial Revolution ushered in the era of the celebration of product, the Digital Revolution now celebrates the consumer.
Because today's consumers initiate and control the conversation, the sooner marketers shift from a product to a customer experience focus, the sooner they will reap the benefits of adapting properly to the changing marketplace.
More than ever, today's marketers are increasingly interested in building optimal customer experiences that drive long-term profitable relationships than they are in driving revenue from widget sales. As they should be. In the age of the empowered consumer, marketing optimization is quickly becoming a function of managing the customer experience.
Shifting from product to customer experience marketing indeed seems a daunting task for enterprises with multiple lines of business operating across multiple channels. Exactly how is it done? Where do we begin?
