As a service to our readers, here’s a good compendium of solid and legitimate organizations you can go to for a variety of marketing-related information, including articles, white papers, terminology, etc.

These organizations vary from pure marketing to functions and specialties such as research, advertising or public relations; from US-based to internationally-based; from brick and mortar to web-only; from open-to-all to level-specific such as executives; from well-known to specialized and less well-known; and from all industries to industry-specific organizatons. You’ll also notice some Washington, DC-centric organizations among these.

Perhaps it’s befitting that this is Abraham Lincoln’s official birthday.  He was certainly a proponent of freedom, and the social networks that have bloomed in cyberspace are all about freedom (the citizen journalist, self-pronounced experts in numerous fields, getting information from many sources, etc.).

While social networking has more going for it than not, and I wrote about it here on April 11, 2007, there are some downsides to using these networks.  Several of these are discussed below.

Have you heard of surveymonkey or boomerang?  Most likely you have received more than one email message asking you to take a survey and providing you with a link to it. 

There are many options available today for conducting your own research—either for free or at a very low cost.  There are examples below this article of survey software readily available online. The first list includes products to help you create and conduct your own brief survey for no charge. All these companies also offer more enhanced survey software capability for modest fees. The second list links to survey software products with relatively low cost options. You can even add a single question to your own website for a simple poll you’d like to offer visitors. Most have varying degrees of support for the user based upon pricing packages you can select.

The American Marketing Association (DC)

As the 2006-2007 President of the DC Chapter of theAmerican Marketing Association, I’d like to share some information about the organization of over 900 professionals and some of the ways this past year that the organization has embraced new technology and its capabilities for marketing campaigns and projects. For my readers who are looking at learning how marketing can help you with your initiatives and start-ups, I encourage you to join the AMA (International headquarters: www.marketingpower.com, 800-AMA-1150; DC chapter: www.amadc.org, 703-683-4883, info@amadc.org).  

Beyond Web 2.0, Mobility

This past week we had a full house at our Inside Track speakers’ program. The presentations focused on how the latest surge in the digital revolution and the new internet will impact Marketing. Our dynamic speakers and moderator provided a rich fabric of new mobile solutions that will enhance future connectivity and dramatically change how Marketing relates to its customers and prospects and how well it functions in the marketplace.  Our moderator, Limor Schafman, President of Keystone TechGroup, LLC, deftly set the stage for the speakers and provided the transition between them.

All businesses today must be more creative than ever before when it comes to marketing, getting the attention of the media, and reinforcing its brand.  The need to do this is certainly great for a start up, and a high tech start up must approach marketing and the media even more creatively.  After all, high tech implies 2.0 communications. There are many terms and buzz words today that deal with ways people and organizations are communicating — social networking, social marketing, web 2.0, viral marketing, word of mouth marketing, blogs — and receiving information — RSS feeds, podcasts and more.

Today, I would like to discuss the online communities that have sprung up online everywhere (this is springtime after all). Everyone’s heard of MySpace, Tribe and Friendster in the social networking space. Well, there are equivalent networks within the business community.

Fast Pitch (www.fastpitchonline.com) bills itself as “the fastest growing online business community in the world.”  There is also LinkedIn, where I am listed, and Meet Up. In preparing this article I have discovered many more networking opportunities for business professionals.

Wikipedia describes a business social network like LinkedIn as “a network that connects businesses by industry, functions, geography and areas of interest.” It goes on to mention a similar one in the UK—Bizmeed, “an emerging online networking service” with “similar tools” that is “developing a live video conferencing feature, as well as actively promoting Bizmeed members through search engine optimisation.”

These networks are either free or have a very low cost of entry.  As mentioned earlier, they are especially beneficial for

high tech startups and entrepreneurs that need to expand their base, build and manage relationships, find referrals, get introduced to other business professionals, promote themselves, drive prospective people to their website, and find capital, benefactors and customers.  Furthermore, it goes without saying that these networks have no boundaries and are worldwide.

They can help you find former colleagues as well. You can either reach out directly to others to ‘link’ to you (think degrees of separation), or, if you pay a premium on LinkedIn, you can have much more flexibility in terms of tracking people down and connecting or re-connecting with them. For instance, I am now ‘linked in’ with current and former Lucent Technologies, AT&T and Avaya professional managers.

These services make it easy to get started and interact and usually involve creating an online profile for yourself and your business and building your online network. Your profile looks a lot like a resume, bio or CV. You can use tutorials and get helpful advice with instructions, including video assistance. For instance, at Bizmeed, you can: create and search boards, create and attend events, create and join groups, engage in live chat networking, send and receive email, and create, read and contribute to blogs.

In my research, I’ve discovered many other networks and have a feeling I’ve just scratched the surface. At Ryze Business Networking (www.ryze.com) members get a “free networking-oriented home page” and can go to location and industry related bulletin boards.

There’s Xing (www.xing.com) which is German-based, bills itself as the “first ‘Web 2.0’ company to go public,” is operated by Open Business Club AG and has two main points of entry on its website—professional contact management and business accelerator.  Xing has recently purchased eConozco (www.econozco.com), which launched in 2003 and is said to be Spain’s “second biggest professional network,” with “around 150,000 members in Spain and Latin America.”

To learn more about these, you can read an article about LinkedIn on http://www.infotoday.com/online/nov04/bardon.shtml or visit some of these websites. You’re likely to find at least one that’s very valuable for you.

While this blog’s focus is on marketing and the media in the high tech investment arena, it is still worth taking a look at some principals of marketing that are generally universal in scope. In fact, good marketers have skills which are very transferable — from B2B to consumer to members to employees and across industries. Of course each of these universes has its own quirks, acronyms, and special needs. As long as a marketer knows marketing basics, industry-specific and audience-specific important details can be learned. And while there are lessons that cross divides, it is also worth noting that what works for one product in one situation can rarely be replicated. However, you can take away elements that have been useful, adjust them for your own technological product or service, and build them into your own, solid marketing plan and media plan.

So, here are some useful things to know:

• Creativity without persuasion is just fluff. The best ads are not necessarily the ones that everyone loves – many of these are memorable, but the product being advertised can get lost.

We can all remember wonderful ads, ones we love, but cannot remember what the product is that’s being advertised. Recently, I love the television ad about a couple about to say their vows. The fiancé starts discussing things in financial terms, and the best man ends up marrying the bride. It’s a funny ad (albeit a sexist ad), and I know it’s for some non-US bank, but that’s all I remember.

• Do not state claims for your product which are exaggerated or questionable; you may not be able to recover if you’ve lost credibility.

Read what the Federal Trade Commission has to say about this: http://www.ftc.gov/redflag.

• Persuasion without a decent product is hollow and short-lived.

Customers and clients may try it once, but unless they’re stuck with a major purchase, such as a business communications system, there will be no repeat business or positive referrals.

• If you put out ten messages and nine of them are true, the public will focus on the one that isn’t and rarely ever give you a chance to make good on it.

There’s an old expressive about one bad apple ruining the whole batch. Truth in advertising is imperative if you do not want your credibility questioned. And while your competitive may be stretching the truth and gaining market share, this will probably backfire in the long run. The same thing is true for earnings reports and other key indicators (think Enron).

• If one customer is unhappy, that customer will tell many more people (the number varies depending on who is being quoted) about this than the customer who is very happy.

No need to elaborate; this one everyone know!

• If you act wisely when you’ve got a problem and are forthright and quick to react, customers can be very forgiving. In fact, if you’ve made a large blunder and admitted it, you will usually be more admired in the long run than you would have if everything went right in the first place.

A case in point is the classic one about the package tampering and Tylenol scare back in the early 80’s when J&J recalled all of its products. This is called crisis management, but it’s also very wise marketing. See http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/w/x/wxk116/tylenol/crisis.html.

• The first to market often has only a 50-50 chance of staying ahead of the pack.

This statistic is not backed by fact; rather, it comes from my own experience observing the marketplace. While sometimes the early bird does have the edge, often it’s better to let the innovator take off from the gate first, tackle the early kinks and landmines, and then pave the way for close followers to perfect the offering and delivery of it to the customer or client. This means that even though you’re not first, if you are skillful in executing the business essentials, your prospects are often very good.

• What you learned in kindergarten…you’ve heard the rest of this before. There is still a lot of truth here. In the consumer market, if your 5-year old finds your product appealing, it’ll probably be a hit.

Welcome to my blog – my first entry in my first blog. I have been very excited to become an active voice in the greater community, sharing information related to marketing and the media in the high-tech entrepreneurial space. I had the opportunity to attend the Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing Conference this week in DC on December 11-13 and am now even more excited to start this blog! I’ll be letting you know all about the impact WOM is having online and offline in future entries.

But first, I’d like to get to know my readers, and I’m certain that you’d like to know something about me as well. I’ll cover the earlier part of my career so you can understand how my background in computing and in marketing and media has come together. This entry is going to be longer than usual. I promise future ones will be shorter.

The Early Days

I started my career at AT&T back when it was the big behemoth – the mother of all telephone companies, fondly and many times, not so fondly, named Ma Bell.  Alexander Graham Bell was a technology leader in his day and set in motion a communications revolution. By the time I joined AT&T it was the largest employer in the nation and in New Jersey and was a monopoly.  I laughed when I was told about the golden handcuffs.  The theory went that once you were lucky enough to be anointed as a Ma Bell employee, you would be well-taken care of and stay there throughout your career.  I was so certain that this would never apply to me that I didn’t sign up for the 401K plan until six months after I was eligible.

 My first job at AT&T was a computer programmer, an entry-level management position. AT&T was a powerhouse company, and they wanted every programmer to get the same training – whether or not they had previous training or experience working in the field. They had high standards and often began a training class with all experienced programmers. Since I was largely a novice in this field and still made the cut, I felt fortunate. Those first three months were grueling. Every exam was a pass or get fired experience. This was my first venture into the technology world of computing, and so, from the very beginning, even though AT&T was voice-centric, my experiences were data-centric.

I was always interested in advertising and marketing and was fortunate to work on the company’s business marketing system.  Thus, I was able to be a techie and yet deal with marketing data. Every Bell Operating Company (BOC) in the nation had to send all their business customer data to headquarters each month to Marketing. The systems consisted of JCL running many huge programs, primarily in Cobol, strung together. The programs that were sent out by headquarters did not include the source code - they were sent as object code or executable modules. The operating companies got creative and would intersperse their own programs into the system. This sometimes created havoc.  (Note: most PC or Mac users are still just running programs and don’t have access to the code – case in point – I’m writing this in Word, a Microsoft proprietary program or application.)

During these years, very few people knew much about computers and programs, and systems analysts (which I became) were highly regarded.  To the average person, this was like a huge black box. And people in the industry worked hard to keep it this way. One of the ways was using jargon, which made everything seemed more serious, difficult to learn, and, well, elitist.  I mention this here, because there are a couple of themes I will come back to:  you’ve got the experts working very hard to maintain an aura of awe around them, and you’ve got lay people who are always playing catch up. You’ve also got the hockey stick learning curve that highlights the gap between the techies with the everyday Joe or Jane during the product introduction period.  Once people get over the hump of having to learn something new, they often embrace it full-tilt, sending the techies off in a race to come up with the next major leap. Today, the pace has accelerated dramatically!

I was also fortunate to be exposed to Unix, which was created by two Bell Labs computer gurus, then given away to universities and others. Not only did we run small Unix programs (shells), but used this to store source code and the many iterations of changes, updates and fixes for all our systems’ programs.  Although this was the heyday of mainframe computing, Unix ran on mini computers which was really, in my view, the forerunner of the PC.  In fact, Microsoft borrowed a lot from Unix to come out with their personal computer operating system, DOS, making it understandable to me from the start and giving me a leg up on understanding personal computing technology. 

I know how antiquated this all sounds in today’s world of technology and nano technology, but we were at the cusp of massive changes that would take place in the industry.  Many people today look at pre-post Internet as a major sea-change, and it was. However, in the mid 1980s the shift to individuals having their own computer and running programs was also a major change. People could control their own data, their own technology and their own learning.