This morning I attended an event hosted by IBM. The topic of the half day conference was The Future of Interactive Technologies. I decided to title today’s post as The Future of Interactive Technologies is NOW. Why? As I sat beside many businesses – both retailers and suppliers such as myself – many of these business on the retail side or B-C sector, are just starting to implement their social media strategy. For me the future is now. Every business needs to be involved in finding ways to engage and build their tribe/community – as so aptly written – by one of my marketing guru’s Seth Godin. There were some great stats about the trends of social media, the emergence and importance of mobile and of course the value and power that is now wielded by your customer. Over the last 3 years we have written about all of these topics. The power of the brand ambassador, the idea that they are talking about you whether you are there or not, understanding how your target market wants to communicate and then focusing on those digital tools to engage them and featuring businesses that have been doing social media right. Read the rest of this entry »

I am have just finished watching Larry King and yes Larry is now on twitter. His guests were Ashton Kutcher and P Diddy and they were talking about the benefits of twitter and why they tweet. As you all know I write about social media daily - it’s benefits, the  interesting people leading the way and why YOU must get on board and engage your community, customers, clients, friends etc.
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I saw this article in my inbox and it spoke to me as I think the key for every marketing and branding action you take comes down to informative content. What people now need is to find out  is what value your offering has for them—can it  fulfill a need, challenge, or enhance how they live their life? The 21st century customer is now so educated that they are not interested in what you do but, more importantly, how you share information that is of value to them. Can the customer feel your passion in what you do? That energy can be elecrifying and spread like wildfire!
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Recently, I read an article on Scobleizer about the virtues of “ugly” sites. Comments such as “more sticky” and “generally more fun to participate in” were mentioned to justify the revenue driving power of “anti-marketing design”. That, and the notion there’s more street-cred (so to speak) in sites that look like my 5 year-old put them together. Why? Because they don’t look like blatant marketing ploys (just thinly disguised ones, in my opinion).
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With a background and passion for fashion and lifestyle trends, I read many blogs and ezines. Each week I receive a report from Splendora Style Forecast. Amongst the usual celebrity fashion sightings and alerts to some of fashion’s more fabulous things, Gina Pell, content chief and founder, writes and brings attention to some phenomenal issues that beautifully meld with the goings on in the world of lifestyle, fashion and culture.
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