A New Digital Team is Born

So in case you haven't heard the news, SuggestionBox.com had layoffs about 1 month ago. As with the other 200,000 people that were laid off in the tech space, we all searched for our new path. Well my path has led me to partnering up with Adam Levenson, former Product Marketing Manager at SB. Working with Adam over the past year has shown to be very positive in that we complement each others skill-sets and don't mind rolling up our sleeves to get it done, whatever that may be.


So Digital Operative was born. You could call us a boutique digital agency focused on digital strategies for marketing and technology. Our focus will be helping companies engage their customers and have them participate, whether that be in an online community, guerrilla marketing campaign, social app or just improve their overall user experience on their website. We both have work experience across many areas from UI design to PHP development to SEO to Go-to-Market Planning.

What you get when you work with us is a supercharged, agile team that can see the big picture, focus on getting the little wins and create some buzz around what you're doing. At the end of the day we're data guys, we love measuring ROI, making decisions based on analytics and having the data to support and shifts in strategy.

So if you're a top 50 interactive agency, need better customer engagement for your website or need to drive awareness and conversions via digital marketing; go to www.DigitalOperative.com and contact us.

thank you for subscribing to this blog and I'll also be blogging at the Digital Marketing blog.

If you want to follow what I'm up to, check out my Twitter page.

Conversations Around The Web

Today I'm taking the time to point out some insightful blog posts that are focused around conversations, positive change in the world and action.

• Scott Monty of Crayon leaving focus on one color, Blue.



• Read the Crayon Manifesto if you call yourself a Social Media Expert ... really? I think there are visionaries, strategists, but experts? Who knows it all?



• Follow Doc Searls if you've heard of "Markets are conversations" and the Cluetrain Manifesto.



• If you're interested on some current news around Social Media Marketing read this and gain some insight into Samsung's newest campaign.



• If you're just getting into this thing called Conversational Marketing, read Kelly's blog post about using Conversational Marketing to market yourself and read the comments about some marketers' own manifestos.

I try to update my blog as much as I can, but am currently splitting my time between my Twitter account, Gooruze account, Flickr page, new CMO role with SuggestionBox and being a devoted husband :)

Social Media Marketing ... Still No Love

I was reading Laurel's blog about the post she saw on BizReport about a study done by Coremetrics where they surveyed a series of companies to get their take on a breakdown of their marketing budget and where social media fell. I decided to check the post out for myself.

"78% of the marketing professionals stated that social media marketing was a way of getting an edge on their competitors"

An edge on their competitors and only 7.7% of their budget was going this direction. They say the waters are uncharted, they say it's because there's no way to measure the ROI; all valid points I guess. It comes down to what you are trying to "communicate" with the end consumer. Do you actually have a value proposition? Do you even have a great product? There are a lot of good products out there dipping their toes in the social media space and then complaining they don't have the tools to measure their return. Maybe it's not the best reason to invest in something because you think it gives you a competitive edge in your quadrant study. Here's my recommendations to the companies that are standing on the edge trying to figure out this how social media thing that's really been happening since the dawn of forums, chat rooms, bullet boards, etc:

1. Be authentic
2. Have a great product
3. Have a plan of action that includes metrics and how you are going to measure them
4. Tag everything, data is your friend
5. Know your audience, find out where they are 24 hours a day, what devices they use
6. Don't be afraid to test for 30 days and know where your money's going
7. Monitor, Optimize and Increase your touch points
8. At the end of the day, have fun doing it!

Planning is nothing without execution.