Creative Buzz Today » Quick Hits

CRM Daily | Building Strong Customer Relationships

Larry — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:39:09 +0000

CRM Daily discusses the business case and inherent need to build strong customer relationships.

If you’re going to make a commitment, live and die by it. If you’re going to miss that commitment for whatever reason, be honest about it.

CRM Daily | Building Strong Customer Relationships

Sales Direction | Levarage Social Media to Activate Sponsors

Larry — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:37:20 +0000

Carson McKee at Direct Contact provides a few examples of why it’s important to rely on social media to stay in contact with your audiences during the off-season. Focusing on sports, Chris highlights a number of areas the sponsor relationship can be activated even when stadiums aren’t being filled:

Ticket Sales – Do you have a social media angle for marketing tickets?

Contests/Give Aways – Are you giving your market a reason to keep plugged in?

Off Season Drafts/Trades/Personnel Changes – Can you provide perspectives and insight from the source?

Discussion – Can you generate discussion and debate?

Access – Can you provide visibility on team insiders?

Announcements – Can you release info via social networks prior to a press release?

The Offseason: 6 Ways to Stay Plugged In

MarketingVOX | Maximize Email Conversion Through Design

Larry — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:18:12 +0000

MarketingVOX takes a look at a retail email study that found horizontal navigation bars, emails with fewer links, HTML coding (vs. images) and special tactics to highlight sales, seasonal specials and featured departments work best in emails.

How-To: Maximize Conversion with Email Design

MarketingProfs | Marketing in a Recession

Larry — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:04:40 +0000

MarketingProfs takes a look at some studies about marketing in a recession to determine if the following statement is true:

“All the research shows that companies that spend on marketing during a recession come out ahead of the competition as the economy rebounds.”

Based on their findings, you should probably get out your checkbooks. But if you spend, spend wisely…

Marketing in a Recession: What Do the Studies Really Tell Us?

MarketingVOX | Free Images from Google/Yahoo!

Larry — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:14:07 +0000

Have you ever searched tirelessly for an image to use in a blog post? Or just needed something quick right now that you wouldn’t be slapped for later? Well, Google and Yahoo! have an answer: Dedicated search for reusable images.

Google has added a Creative Commons filtering capability to its Image Search results, enabling users to query for images specifically labeled for “reuse,” “commercial reuse,” “reuse with modification” or “commercial reuse with modification.”

Ideally, the feature shall enable a broader array of commercially-usable images to users that don’t want to pay a stock photo company for imagery, and don’t want to deal with the copyright headaches associated with “stealing” an unlicensed picture from Image Search.

The option isn’t currently available on the user interface, but you can enable the pilter by adding a certain parameter to your search URL (in this case, just replace “mountains” with whatever you are actually searching for):

For public domain images — http://images.google.com/images?q=mountains&as_rights=cc_publicdomain

For images licensed with Creative Commons Attribution (that is, images you can use as long as you attribute the image back to the creator) — http://images.google.com/images?q=mountains&as_rights=cc_attribute

For images licensed using Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike — http://images.google.com/images?q=mountains&as_rights=cc_sharealike

In May, Yahoo added a Creative Commons license filter to its own Image Search. Other services, such as compfight.com, enable users to seek Creative Commons-licensed work on flickr.

Ok, so it isn’t the cleanest system in the world, but it will deliver the goods, and we’ve made those URL’s into handy-dandy links. So click away, replace your search term, and start reusing images.

Google, Yahoo Add Creative Commons Filtering to Image Search

Facebook | Creative Buzz Today

Larry — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:19:57 +0000

Our new Facebook Company Page is live! Become a fan of Creative Buzz Today on Facebook, and have updated content delivered to you daily!

Facebook | Creative Buzz Today

Mashable | Google to Launch a Twitter Search Engine?

Larry — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:41:51 +0000

Mashable is reporting Google is preparing to launch a microblogging search engine, with real-time results based on relevancy.

Google to Launch a Twitter Search Engine?

Lifehacker | Google Wave Q/A Preview

Larry — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:31:56 +0000

Have questions about the launch of the new Google internet-changing technology? Check out Lifehacker’s Wave Preview, in convenient, easy-to-read, Q/A format.

Google Wave Questions and Answers – Google Wave Preview

ReadWriteWeb | Social Media ROI

Larry — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:54:20 +0000

ReadWriteWeb looks at Dell’s success in leveraging Twitter as a sales channel, along with four older studies that show there’s something to this social community thing.

Social Media ROI: Dell’s $3m on Twitter and Four Better Examples.

Campaign Monitor | Are banner ads worth it?

Larry — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:00:25 +0000

Campaign Monitor takes a look at the banner ad testing/creation process to determine if they actually payoff:

Back in April of this year we decided to have a look at running some banner ads on a number of high profile design-related sites. Over the last couple of years, advertising in our little corner of the web has come a long way. There are loads of highly trafficked design sites with excellent content and affordable ad slots. On top of this, the rise of targeted ad networks such as The Deck and Fusion Ads has made it much easier to get in front of the right crowd.

Promoting your product or service with banner ads – is it worth it?