How To Share A Company Holiday Card Online

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Tom Bishop

It happens every year. The holiday season.

And if you’re in marketing or HR, that means it’s time to deal with the company’s holiday greeting strategy. Yes, there’s a strategy.

Why is there a strategy? Because everyone differs on how to send holiday greetings in business. There’s:

“Let’s send a postcard to customers.” – but who’s designing it? And who will approve it, without insulting anyone, before it’s too late to send?
“How about an email?” – but now you don’t have to send to just customers to keep costs down, but everyone. Now you need multiple messages.
“Don’t worry about complaints, just blast everyone the same thing.” – but this is outside the best practice guidelines of marketing. Shouldn’t your holiday greeting campaign be as structured as every other?

Well, at KnowledgeVision we tackled one of these holiday campaigns by using a multi-pronged approach. First, by creating an online presentation to appeal to as many people as possible, then sharing it with customers and other groups through different email campaigns, and then by writing a blog post about it and sharing it on social sites (shhh – you’re reading that now).

The result, about a minute long, is called “Happy… from KnowledgeVision”:

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I Gotta Admit, I Like Being Quoted

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Tom Bishop

It’s a small thing, really.

Earlier this year, I took part in a video project for Curata, a brilliant software firm providing an easy-to-use site where users can find online content for their own newsletter and online portal. They were doing a video shoot at their User Conference, and I wound up being quoted in the Curata Mobile App press release!

Then I published a few blog posts and videos of my own for KnowledgeVision, showing off our product and how I like to use it for presenting interesting topics. It’s mostly about how best to use online presentations, but also industry issues and shifts in technology. Some of our stuff got picked up by Business2Community and the Custom Content Council, and posted all over the social web. I love that.

Now I’ve contributed a segment to an e-Book for PR Newswire, “The Practitioner’s Guide to Social Influencer Engagement”. It’s part of their promotion called Agility At Work – It’s a social hub dedicated to sharing tips, tools and best practices to keep up with changes in the realm of earned media. The e-Book is a comprehensive guide for any marketer who wants to find and energize their best social media followers.

My segment is part of Chapter 4, and is called “Turning Influencers Into Your Brand’s Voice”. It’s about what to do once you have been able to work with your most influential followers. I set a few ground rules for engaging them, such as: The most influential people are not necessarily your customers; people use social platforms mostly to converse with friends, not to shop, and; there is a difference between turning a person into an influencer and making them a customer.

PR Newswire did a tremendous job with “The Practitioner’s Guide to Social Influencer Engagement”, and I look forward to the outcome of this e-Book and getting some more recognition for me and for KnowledgeVision. That is, after all, what I do.

I should also point out a few other people who wrote segments of Chapter 4: Anne-Marie Kovacs is founder of the BOOMbox Network, an agency focused on marketing for Boomers; Lee Ann Forbes is a former commodities trader and Marketing Manager for Micro Strategies, and; Vatsala Isaac, an experienced Marketing Consultant. Each of their segments are a must-read for turning influencers into brand advocates.

I don’t say this often, but I gotta say I like being noticed in my industry and quoted as an expert on topics related to it. Just once in awhile I can look in the mirror and say, “Hey, I’m pretty cool.”

Storytelling: Applying Art To Video Marketing

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Tom Bishop

Do you study the craft? No, I don’t mean witchcraft. Though sometimes creating an idea can seem just as mysterious as conjuring a spell.

I mean the craft of storytelling.

When we sell an idea, like a product, or show others how to apply a principle through a training course, we resort to telling a story. Some stories are whiz-bang, like a movie with poor dialogue but brilliant special effects.

Other stories are more focused on character development, witty patter and cleverly-devised situations, but not so much on the explosions.

What they all have in common is a craft.

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Online Video Is Trending: Drive Holiday Sales In-Store And Online

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Tom Bishop

Image Courtesy ABC News

As we enter Cyber Week 2012, we know that record numbers of shoppers hit the stores over Thanksgiving weekend. Among the online shopping trends we’ve seen include multi-channel shopping, mobile advertising, and opening times that are earlier than ever.

Social platforms will be a bigger factor than before. 2012 will also be the year that Pinterest really starts to show its worth for driving online purchases, especially with apparel.

Another trend is that stores are pushing for in-store sales, using sales that aren’t available online and by guaranteed price-matching.

But the biggest trend appeared earlier in the year, when 2012 officially became the first year that online clothing purchases, or purchases influenced by the web, surpassed those made in a store. The driving factors in online retail are increased use of mobile devices and tablets, and an increasing emphasis on video. It turns out that 40% of video viewers wind up in the store or on the store’s website.

That’s huge. Do 4 out of ten viewers of television ads drop everything and head for the store? Nope. No way.

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Online Training Content: Right In Front Of Your Nose

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Tom Bishop

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” – George Orwell

George Orwell wrote that in 1946. And it’s true today. It’s one of those timeless sentiments that can be applied to almost any situation.

Here, it’s used for an innocent purpose; to point out that putting together corporate training courses can seem difficult, but if you simply look around, you’ll find the content you need is, well, in front of your nose.

The Current Thought On Training

Elliott Masie’s Learning 2012 Conference was held this October in Orlando, Florida. This is the foremost conference for current thought on learning and corporate training. The event typically keynoted by people of note like Colin Powell, Bill Clinton, Malcolm Gladwell, and Susan Cain.

The topics range from using mobile technology for online learning courses to using video for training in the workplace. The people leading sessions include thought leaders from learning institutions, global companies, software and service providers, and others who specialize in training and leadership.

KnowledgeVision’s Michael Kolowich led an inspiring session on how to create training courses using materials most companies already have. The dilemma that trainers face is that building a course seems to require new content, new video, and a new script. But it’s not true.

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Presentation: “We’re Talking About Content. Interactive Content”

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Tom Bishop

Today we’re talking about content. Specifically, interactive content. The kind you can view online, anytime, any day, and interact with. Here’s an overview of the new white paper from KnowledgeVision called “Interactive 24/7 Content: Why Online Presentations Belong In Every Digital Content Strategy”.

Presentation Transcript

There are a lot of content types. White papers? Videos? Blog posts? Infographics? What’s that? We’ve got an infographic for that. Download our infographic: “The Pros And Cons Of Online Content Types” below.

Have you ever heard of online presentations? These show you video and slides together, as well as web pages, images, forms, navigation, transcripts, notes, links, and downloads. They’re in the cloud, so they’re available anytime as long as you are too. They’re multisensory, engaging, searchable, and trackable. They can be shared or embedded, and they encourage interaction.

So we’re talking not just about content, but… content.

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Expanding The Marketing and Sales Funnel: Why More Is Merrier

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Tom Bishop

It’s the age-old question: Do you want Quality or Quantity?

When marketing delivers a dozen leads from a highly engaging event, it’s usually expected that these people will buy, or at least get into a proposal discussion.

But when marketing hauls in hundreds of leads in a day, we all know what the sales conversion rates will be: Low and lower.

But with content marketing, the funnel is getting a lot wider than it used to be, as more people find your articles and videos and respond to your calls to action. Here’s how to raise the quality of lead even as you raise the number.

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Being The Lightning Rod: When A Social Media Disaster Strikes Unfairly

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Tom Bishop

Have you seen a more egregious example of unfairness than this?

During Hurricane Sandy, aka #frankenstorm, some Good, Bad, and Ugly things happened on social networks. There were fake tweets about flooding at the NYSE, and of course the American Apparel #SandySale fiasco (WTF were they thinking?).

But the New York Road Runners, the running community and ING bank can hardly be blamed for the devastation wrought by the superstorm, yet the social backlash against the New York marathon dwarfs all the venom ever spent against McDonalds for #McDStories, Kenneth Cole for using the Cairo uprising to sell clothes or KFC Thailand for suggesting that a deadly earthquake was caused by people buying chicken.

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Social Complaints: So What The Hell Do You Want?

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Tom Bishop

Say you’re browsing on Facebook, or Google+, where this is less of an issue (for now), and up pops yet another post complaining about something.

Usually, it’s a complaint about a certain type of post, like political arguments or fitness boasts.

And there are enough of these complaint posts-about-posts that they’ve become a new type of post themselves.

Well, here’s my complaint:

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Online Presentation: “Content Marketing: Ready For Prime Time”

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Tom Bishop

The B2B Intelligence Center has produced a new study called “Content Marketing: Ready For Prime Time”. Tom Bishop from KnowledgeVision provides an online presentation that looks at the study and examines it’s findings. In addition to in-depth numbers, “Content Marketing: Ready for Prime Time” contains analysis and interpretation, applying the research to real-world situations and explains its meaning for the in-the-trenches marketer.

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Tag Archives: LinkedIn

How To Share A Company Holiday Card Online

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Storytelling: Applying Art To Video Marketing

Online Training Content: Right In Front Of Your Nose

The Current Thought On Training

Expanding The Marketing and Sales Funnel: Why More Is Merrier

Online Presentation: “Content Marketing: Ready For Prime Time”