Last week I had the privilege of attending MarketingProfs’ Digital Mixer in Chicago. For two solid days I enjoyed sessions and keynotes from some of the brightest stars in the digital marketing universe. Just Google the conference and you can quickly see that there’s been no shortage of excellent summary posts. For mine, I’d like to add a take from our unique perspective. First, we are an advertising agency as opposed to an in-house marketer. Plus, while we work with businesses of all sizes, we counsel several small businesses that are very interested in how new media can grow their business. Thus my post will look at some of the best conference takeaways by area (social media, search, blogging, email marketing) through the prism of agency and small business. (more…)

Do you have a Facebook page for your brand? (You should.) Do you have a Twitter account for your brand? (You should.) Facebook and Twitter just quietly made it easier for you to manage your messaging on both simultaneously. The next time you login to Facebook and go to manage your page(s) you will be prompted to link said page to a Twitter account if you choose. The next time you post a status update, share a photo or link, or add a calendar event, the update is automatically pushed through to Twitter as a new tweet. Cool, huh? (more…)

Twitter is blissfully simple. It’s a 140-character micro-blogging service where you follow others’ updates while others follow yours. However this simplicity can leave many businesses in the dark on where to start. As I’ve mentioned before, we tweet for our many of our clients but we also teach them to tweet. As the old saying goes, when you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime. In the spirit of a helping to create a lifetime of social media eats for us all, here are our tips for business tweets. (more…)

Feel like taking social networking back to it’s face-to-face roots? This Thursday, July 16th there will be an Iowa City area Tweetup at the Vine in Coralville. Enjoy great conversation, buffalo wings, a pint or two, and share ideas for taking Twitter to the next level in your life and work. This particular Tweetup is the brainchild of Iowa City Salesforce.com guru Mike Gerholdt and Lia Pontarelli, marketing coordinator at Panchero’s Mexican Grill. Get more details and RSVP at Twtvite now. See you there!

I love the Robert Kennedy quote about how he looked at “things that never were and asked why not.” Why not is a great question. I love flipping it back onto others when a new idea is on the table. And right now, I feel like asking why not of our friends in Palo Alto.

It seems that Facebook is dead set against small businesses (or namely organizations with only a handful of fans) creating usernames. Quick history – about a month ago Facebook let users and big businesses or brands with over 1,000 fans create usernames for their profiles and pages. This outraged a few firebrands like us and shortly thereafter they said that the ‘others’ could create usernames on June 28th. Okay. Unfair still. But progress nonetheless. So as I waited on Sunday I found that I could still not create usernames for a couple of our clients as Facebook has implemented a no usernames for pages with less than 100 fans rule.

As I’ve outlined many times here this is just plain wrong. First of all, it’s counterintuitive. Usernames provide a quick and easy way to promote your Facebook presence and – wait for it – get more fans. If usernames are primarily a promotional tool, why would you deny this to the most promotionally challenged segment of your userbase?!?

There are probably some businesses that Facebook has key relationships with that they need to take care of. That’s fine. But what is the danger in letting all pages create usernames, Facebook? As one collegue said during the original late-night username land rush, great — now I can do something on Facebook that I’ve always been able to do on Twitter.

If you’d like to add your support to asking Facebook why not, join our (irony alert) Facebook fan page and let them know that small business matters.

Photo credit Daniel Slaughter via Flickr