Under “Sharing Valuable Tips Will Actually Make You Money - Exposing expertise actually shows people how difficult it can be to do what you do, encouraging them to hire you and get that task off their list. Not to mention getting the job done right the first time.” We agree. Remember how long it took you and everyone else at your company to build up your body of knowledge. No matter how informative your white paper, article, or blog post is – there is no way the reader can learn everything you know that fast. (At least we hope not!)

Under “Become A Resource By Sharing The Spotlight – Showcasing others who have great content reflects back on you. Plus, you don’t have all the answers. Help people connect the dots.” It’s kind of like the old saying, “Two heads are better than one.” Joining forces with another company will benefit both of you. If you choose your partners wisely, you are exposing your business to a group of fantastic prospects and giving yourself the credibility of your partner. That’s why we published our free e-book 100 Ways to Build Your Business in 2012. Of course, five of the tips in the book are from Clear Verve, but 95 of them aren’t. And all the participants have 19 other companies promoting the entire group.

And one tip we’d like to add:
Don’t get hung up on the platform. Some companies get so worried about what they are doing (or not doing) on Facebook/Twitter/YouTube, etc. that they don’t even realize that maybe that’s not the right place to start. Every business is different. For your business, email may be the right solution. Or a printed newsletter delivered by snail mail. Or maybe you should be writing press releases, or focusing on LinkedIn. Think about where your customers are, how they live their lives, and how your service fits into what they are doing when they work with you. You wouldn’t spend money on advertising without thinking about it, would you? Give the same thought to your content marketing strategy.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Other resources:
A new social media planning tool
Niches – A smart strategy
The importance of a good graphic
The challenges of social media

Engage through multiple channels. With the advent of social media, many organizations (both for-profit and not-for-profit) have turned to social media as a primary way to communicate. However, as our social media survey found, attracting audiences to social media sites is a HUGE challenge. The social good survey backs this up. Its results showed that the most effective way to break through to new audiences is through mainstream media, but that social media is critical for maintaining relationships.

Engage to build trust. Although less than half (41%) of the social good survey respondents claimed to understand how nonprofits are run and managed, 26 percent of people cite effective use of funds as their primary reason for giving. Another worrisome fact – less than half of the respondents think nonprofits effectively manage their funds. What to do? Educate your constituents! Explain how funds are used. Do it over and over again, not just once a year in your annual report. Talk about use of funds in monthly emails, post results to Facebook, and explain how decisions are made in your blog. People want to know your organization is well-managed.

We know nonprofit marketing presents special challenges not found in for-profit marketing. Check out this recent blog post and slideshare presentation on a talk we recently gave on this very subject. We hope it will give you some great ideas.

Other resources:
Details matter
Getting a fresh perspective

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

For the past year, I’ve committed to a healthier lifestyle and have been following Weight Watchers.  I haven’t shared much about this because I’m still working on getting to my goal “weight.”  So far I’m way impressed by this program and it really works – I’ve lost over 70 lbs.

Weight Watchers recently rolled out many improvements to the plan for 2012 including a new iPhone app called Weight Watchers Barcode Scanner.  This app allows you to scan barcodes and calculates the PointsPlus values of food.  I recently downloaded this app and so far I really like it.

Weight loss programs and services are a hot topic this time of year because there is a large portion of the population that can use these services.  According to the Worldwide Health Organization, over 1.8 billion people are overweight worldwide and it is estimated that and people spend more than $60 billion on weight loss programs and services.  Wow. That’s a whole lot of market potential.  No wonder you see so many products and services popping up to capture a bit of this market share.

So with all the weight loss program choices out there, how does Weight Watchers stand out with their marketing?  Here are the top five reasons why I think Weight Watchers marketing rocks:

1. Consistent branding, messaging and communications with members who are engaged.

2. Well-respected celebrity endorsers and partners– Jennifer Hudson, Charles Barkley, Hungry Girl, and Dr. Oz. Plus, they also feature real users of the program and their success stories.

3. An easy-to-use online and offline community to help you keep your weight loss on track with success stories, tips, blogs, challenges, etc.

4. Mobile apps for tech-savvy consumers.

5. Print publications (cookbooks and a magazine) plus products to make following the program easier.

The marketing of Weight Watchers definitely reflects their great understanding of their audiences and a focused effort to engage their “ideal” consumer.  This provides Weight Watchers with the best opportunity to stand out from the crowd.  For example, Charles Barkley is clearly a great spokesperson  to engage more men, the apps engage techy consumers and Dr. Oz targets middle age women.  Is your marketing this focused?

Susan Schoultz is Design Director at Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create,  and execute marketing campaigns.  Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve2.

However, with 80 percent of all Americans using a social network, social media must be part of every business’ marketing strategy. One of the best ways to ensure a successful social media strategy is to have a social media policy. This will enable your company to enlist the efforts of multiple employees (or volunteers, in the case of a nonprofit) to get the work done. While we believe our template is a great start, we are often asked more detailed questions about legal issues we have a difficult time answering.

That’s why I was so excited to find this online interview on LexBlog. While it won’t answer all your legal questions, it’s a good start from a reputable source. I hope you’ll take a few minutes (well, eight actually) to watch and learn.

Well, we’ve solved that problem! Last year, we came up with the crazy idea of trying to get 20 of our favorite thought leaders to share five ideas that would help businesses innovate, grow, or manage themselves better. We contacted a few people, who loved the idea, and our big project for 2011, 100 Ways to Build Your Business in 2012 was born.

After several months of hard work, we’re pleased to share these great ideas with you. The book includes thoughts on marketing/PR, web/social media, management, and video/photo, so you are sure to find something that is applicable to your business! Best of all, you can also sign up to receive a monthly tips from the ebook for the next year. (Because seriously, who can remember or implement 100 ideas all at once?)

You can download the free e-book and sign up for the monthly emails at the 100 Ways to Build Your Business website.

Our best wishes for a busy and productive 2012!

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

It is my virtual eye candy and go to place for inspiration, ideas and fun whenever I have a few minutes of down time!   What a great way to visually display and share things you like online and on your mobile phone (thank you for developing the iphone app Pinterest team).

So what exactly is Pinterest for those that are not on it and haven’t heard of it?  It’s an online pinboard to organize and share the things you love on the web– art, recipes, food, books, craft ideas, clothes, photography, fitness tips, etc.  You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.  You have to be invited to join this site and it’s worth it.   This online community is getting some buzz from many on the web and many brands are testing the waters.  As I wrote this post, I just saw that Creativity-Online shared a recent post about this very point and that Time Inc., Nordstrom, Etsy and Land’s End are taking notice of the marketing power behind this social community.

If you need an invite to Pinterest, leave a comment on this post and we’ll try to hook you up.  For newbie Pinterest folks, check out this guide from the folks at SortaCrunchy.

If you are on Pinterest, follow me.

Susan Schoultz is Design Director at Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create,  and execute marketing campaigns.  Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve2.

If you’re not familiar with Tri-Adathon, it’s a once a year opportunity for Milwaukee-area nonprofits to receive some really great pro-bono marketing work. Each year, we take applications from local organizations, select a number of projects to work on, and then shut down and complete these projects in a 24-hour work marathon. It’s exhausting and fun. It’s also given us the opportunity to meet some really great people and learn a lot about the many organizations that make our community a better place. The 2012 Tri-Adathon will be held in spring. Be sure to watch for our call for entries coming in March or April.

We don’t do Tri-Adathon specifically to get publicity, but it’s nice when that happens. Many thanks to our friend and client, Gary Ross from Community Health Charities of Wisconsin for nominating us. We’re looking forward to another successful creativity marathon this spring.

Here’s a video of our Tri-Adathon experience last year:

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

My presentation focused on the results of our recent Social Media Survey of Nonprofits ( get the results here) , specifically what nonprofits value about social media, and the challenges nonprofits face in implementing social media tools for their organizations. Because the Business Journal was kind enough to ask me to speak at this event, I wanted to be sure to deliver some high quality content for them. The result of my prep for this event is a new tool we hope you’ll find useful in planning your social media strategy. We call it the Ongoing Social Media Strategy Wheel.

One of the biggest challenges faced by nonprofit is getting others involved in the effort, either from a participation standpoint or from an implementation standpoint. This is partially because most nonprofits (64%) do not have a social media policy guiding the people charged with implementing social media. If your organization doesn’t have a social media policy, be sure to download our template so you can fix this!  A social media policy can help make it “safe” to build a team of people to get the work done, rather than relying on a single person (who often has other work to do).

The other challenge is finding time to plan a strategy. Although most of us would never think of spending advertising dollars without a plan or hiring a receptionist and not training that person on how to answer the phone, many people don’t think anything of just jumping into social media without a plan of action.  We hope our new document, the Ongoing Social Media Strategy Wheel, helps address the planning issue. When we created it, we wanted to be sure we recognized the following things:

• Most organizations are already using social media in some way. It would be stupid for me to lead you through the perfect planning process for people that are not yet involved in social media. That process won’t work if you’re already participating because you can’t stop and undo what you’ve already done just to make a plan.
• Planning is not a one time activity. You have to constantly reassess where you are at, look for new ideas, and pay attention to what is going on in the world.
• The world doesn’t stop while you plan. You can’t take a vacation from interacting with your social media contacts while you think. You have to think and act at the same time.

The ongoing social media strategy wheel attempts to show this by using continuous circles. The inner circle illustrates the planning and reflection activities that most people forget. These activities are conducted internally and aren’t seen by the public, but they are very important because performing these activities will increase the effectiveness of the woare the public sees. The outer circle illustrates the activities that most people see. Both wheels are rotating constantly and at the same time.

We hope that this new document will help you continuously refine your communications on social media.

If you want to see the rest of the presentation from the Social Media for Nonprofits event (the ideas work for for-profits too), you can view it here:

The cool thing about it was that you can not only mail this card but plant the seeds within it.  For four postcards at $8.95 you can share your love of “going green” and plant a few seeds.

Susan Schoultz is Design Director at Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create,  and execute marketing campaigns.  Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve2.

I disagree. I think Harley Davidson has all the key ingredients needed to succeed at crowdsourcing.

• They have a very large group of fans
• Their fans are truly devoted to the brand, to the point of tattooing the logo on their bodies
• They care about what Harley Davidson stands for and don’t want the company to water down their brand
• They understand their own experiences. Although many of the people who work at Harley Davidson are riders, and they obviously understand their audience, they can’t possibly know everything about what their riders experience.
• They already have many brand evangelists who will gladly tell you why a Harley is the best bike in the world

Of course, when sifting through the ideas generated by the crowd, I’m sure the people in the marketing department at Harley will come across more than a few ideas that are real dogs. If there is anything I’ve learned from my years of experience in marketing, it’s that everyone thinks they can come up with great marketing ideas, but not everyone can. Good marketing is about a lot more than just pure creativity. It’s creativity mixed with a bit of psychology, tempered by facts about the consumer, and mixed with an ability to understand how the message will be received – not just what they company wants said. That said; I’m more than willing to bet that there will be some brilliant ideas that the Harley Davidson marketing folks can develop into campaigns that will really resonate with current and future riders. And that’s what marketing is all about.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve