Not even completly started
Trying to complete my site and this blog is taking a bit longer than I anticipated. The earlier posts were just some of my thoughts on certain subjects and I will be adding more.
I will post a bit more about me later with a picture or maybe now with one 
Social Responsibility
This concept does not require much discussion on except that most companies must embrace the concept of “green” because that is the trend. Some industries have picked up quicker than others; however social responsibility will play a big role in a company distinguishing themselves from their competitors. I can help create layouts and put together pieces that convey your “green” mentality as well as help create a marketing/advertising campaign around this concept. This movement will pick up momentum and it will be something most companies should be prepared for.
Lifestyle marketing and advertising
I am a strong believer that the emotion or feeling a product or service sells is a better selling point than the actual product or service that you might be trying to sell.
Why is this? When was the last time you put a price on happiness, or comfort, or something soothing. People will pay more when you appeal to some basic needs of theirs. Instead of just showing a product in a sell sheet or in a print ad, show that product being used in a positive way. With the imagery capturing what feeling you want to equate with your product. Market it accordingly, and with some patience and you will not only build a product with a reputation for such emotions but you will be building a similar brand image. Image is everything in business. Products can be repaired or replaced, however images cannot be mended. They can only be changed.
Lifestyle marketing will build the brand image you want. It only takes some patience, diligence and a designer that is sensitive to your plan.
Web 2.0
The iPhone, captivating in its style and functionality, is the birth for commercial web 2.0. What is web 2.0? Is it just another tech buzzword? Is it important to me and my business? The answers are rather simple. When you understand what web 2.0 is, you will understand its importance to your business and to any business that wants to survive.
The age of the internet and email brought massive changes in how we communicate and conduct business in normal day to day scenarios. Instead of calling, when monthly plans cost money and cell phones were not yet as common, email picked up steam and popularity and became the preferred method of communications over a very short period of time. Even though email had been around for many years it was a geek’s way of communicating, over data lines using computers. I mean the first image of “cool” for using a computer was Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Not exactly who I would have wanted selling my product at the time.
Email gave birth to web pages and the internet as we know it today was born. Filled with information, useless and useful, about anything, everyone and anyplace the web quickly grew in popularity. Companies found it a great way to spread their message and attract new customers. This led to ways of generating business thousands of miles away from a customer’s living room. Companies started getting savvy in how they used their web pages and design started pushing the browsers limits. It even started a browser war. The web and email was starting to become “cool”.
Right around this time cell phones became the in thing. They were inexpensive and everyone got one. In no time anyone could reach anyone they knew, anywhere and anytime for a fraction of what it would have cost them five years earlier. The world became smaller and the challenge business started facing was that they had information stored somewhere but they wanted that information to be available anywhere and anytime to anyone (actually they wanted some information to only go to clients, and some to go to some employees and some to go to some other employees, but they wanted that information to get out).
Companies started making it easier to access this information over their websites, whether it is a company portal for employees or a customer account area like most web-stores have or just public data like news on their website. Companies wanted this data to get there it needed to go to serve who it needed to serve ASAP. Laptops were all the rage, in the end the internet (in this case I mean the internet being accessed through a browser on your computer) just wasn’t big enough to handle this task.
So the Blackberry is invented by a professor at a university. Now you have mobile email, anywhere and anytime. You can even access the web and it’s also a phone. It was one device that served all that information. But it doesn’t stop there. Blogs gain popularity sometime in 2005/2006 and everyone is a writer on the web. Companies to survive MUST have a blog. It shouldn’t come off as being commercial but rather informative. Now a company with a blog, a website, email that can be accessed all over the world, data stored in countless databases, information stored on several servers, news that they want to get out, plans they need to initiate, and yada yada yada.
What binds all this? What will bring the web as we know it to some sort of order and decency? Web 2.0, or like I like to think of it as social networking on the web or webworking (networking on the web). Web 2.0 will allow companies to access information not only from their databases and networks but also from public and social ones. This allows you to connect current and potential customers with sales. Marketing will be able to interact with these potential customers through interfaces on a computer, a Blackberry or even a phone. It will tie your ERP and CRM to blogs, news feeds, industry information, financial information, and any other bucket of information you want to access and feed it to you. Web 2.0 will allow your users (customers, cannon fodder, whatever you want to call them) to control, to some extent, their interaction with you. It will tie imagery, sound and video.
In short Web 2.0 is that same “cool” person’s idea from the 80’s blossoming to what actually is not only cool but also what is and will be the norm. Do you think embracing it is important to your company’s future?
Today is the start of my tomorrow
We are off. The beginning of bloobieblog is at hand, and as I get the site set up along with this blog, I hope to be posting on a daily basis.