Input

There is a great increase in the recent number of posts on my blog. I realize that this is the outcome of a lot of input in the last few weeks. I also realize that this input comes from the fact that the camp that I am transferred now is near a city while my previous camp was on a very small village. While I am out of the camp and wandering around the city I see a lot of things and these things may trigger my thoughts. Even the most trivial thing or fact can lead to a chain of thoughts and ideas which may gradually evolve to something bigger. On the other hand, living in a small village can greatly restrain your thought, outcome and your potentials; unfortunately that’s a very dangerous situation for one’s personal development.

Professional blogging

Blogging for money or fame? There are two types of professional bloggers: Those who blog for money and those who blog to brand their businesses or themselves.

The former earn money mainly from advertising and sales. They advertise through an advertising network such as google Adsense, BlogAds, etc, or they manually arrange advertising deals.
The later blog about products, services and information that they sell through their blog or another linked site. The sales model may be consisted of their own made products or affiliate products.

Welcome to the free world

Welcome to the new world of free products, services and information. This is the concept that governs the web 2.0 and the new media. It has started being implemented in the offline world too. This is the outcome of too much production and offer and a modern sales technique. Actually all those free stuff eventually lead to the generation of more sales. This may sound somehow contradictory but as soon as the reasoning is explained it is obvious. Free stuff works as a lure. All that wealth of information can help a potential customer to decide if a product or service is suitable for him/her. Moreover it can be a dynamic presentation on the salesman toolbox.

Examples
Let’s give two examples to make the above statement more clear and comprehensible; one concerning an online business and one concerning the regular offline business. The online example: suppose you want to market / sell a new piece of software, you can write an ebook or a series of posts, videos, podcasts, etc. about the procedure or the function that the software you sell does. Then you can connect the written procedure or function with your software (via link or reference) and have an effective sales and marketing tool. The offline example (just to show that this technique is exactly as efficient as in the online world) might be the following: you have a marketing firm specialized in public relations, you can provide a sort of free services as a starting series of PR campaigns and in order to start a potential client base and to create a relationship with them.

Future Predictions
The trend of “everything is free” will continue to grow rapidly in terms of customer consumption and marketing technique. Each of those products, services and pieces of information will have a referring part that is the underlying hidden marketing / sales message.

Social Causes

One great use of social media and user generated content of any form (text, audio and especially video) is to support a cause and a social initiative. Corporations in particular can utilize that form of communication to publicize and enhance awareness of the cause and their contributions as well. Corporate social initiatives and corporate social responsibility are current trends that have great impact in brand reputation and equity. I believe that businesses will realize the potential benefits that social media could add to their CSR campaigns and start utilizing these as strategic tools.

An example of my previous statement can clarify what I mean. Suppose you are a business that starts a new social initiative, for example a race against deforestation. You can host videos and other forms of content (such as photos, text comments, etc.) of local people and your employees planting trees. On each event you plan and host you can add valuable content of that kind to inspire more people to join your efforts, to show that while doing these activities you can have fun and to show that you support and embrace your community and its members. These videos or media of any kind you choose to implement can also have a great educational value.

Business Strategy Evolution

Last year I had written a series of posts about the possible evolution of business strategy. A great blogger I know, Dmitry Linkov, was writing his post-graduate assignment on this topic and these were some of my thoughts about the subject (you can find my thoughts here, here and here). Anyway, thinking of my ideas about business strategy evolution it seems that I have not included what these days seems so obvious: social media. Social media are and will definitely be included in the short and medium-term focus of business strategy and innovational – creative thinking. In fact, I foresee social media as key elements that corporations and organizations will implement as core competencies and they will take advantage of their users’ generated content as business strengths.

Great Brands…

Great brands not only sell like crazy; they also provide a unique consumer experience. They tell a story. A great brand name is Warcraft. It started as a game and it has evolved into a whole philosophy. Warcraft originally was a strategy pc-game. There are 3 series of warcraft: warcraft 1 (Orcs and Humans), warcraft 2 (Tides of Darkness and the expansion: Beyond the Dark portal), warcraft 3 (The Rhein of Chaos and the expansion: The frozen throne). Later came the ultimate MMRPG World of Warcraft and its latest expansion The Burning Crusade. But Blizzard (the computer game manufacturer company) does not sell only software but also books, comics and other merchandise. Blizzard has created a successful brand build upon a wonderful story. It’s that story that sells like crazy. There are many other similar titles both for the strategy and the MMRPG game that simply cannot compete warcraft because of the strong community it has build over the years and is based on an evolving and absolutely consistent story. Figures appeared in previous versions of the game appear again in the multiplayer game giving the players a strong feeling of consistency and a flashback. When one remembers one in-game character from its childhood switching to another massive multiplayer role playing game is getting almost impossible. There is strong emotional connection with the game. That is the ultimate branding technique. Connect the brand with the users in such a strong emotional relationship that can never be replaced.

Thoughts on blogging

Blogging should be free of writing rules. Free as thinking is. By applying rules to the writing style of a post is like setting barriers and limitations to thought. It's the mental picture that matters, the idea or the point one is trying to make, not the syntax or grammar. Of course these matter too but they are less important. Suppose you want to express an idea, let's use the depiction of a house as an example, you can take a photo of the house or you can draw it with many different ways but at the end it will be a house. So when you want to express an idea or a view try focusing on the transmission of the idea to the audience rather than get lost in words and expressions.

Satisfaction from work

Doing a job that you like is very critical for your well-being and mental health on the long term. These thoughts came up as a result of all my previous experiences and the trigger was my military service in which I have to do a lot of unpleasant tasks each and every day. Each moment of the day I realize that I definitely cannot live the rest of my life doing a job that I don't like or even worst I hate.

An additional point I want to make is that I can only think of three possibilities concerning job satisfaction: you can have a pleasant job which you enjoy, an unpleasant job which you don't like but you have to do for living and a job which some people may consider pleasant but doesn't suit you (for example a job that you were forced to practise due to some reasons). While I am thinking all these I am once more feeling extreme happiness for studying business administration and choosing to become a marketer.

Latest news...

I am planning to make some major changes in my blog when I am dismissed from the army and released from any obligations. Right now all I am trying is to keep up to date with some of the blogs that I am a reader. For that purpose I use a little complex system since I have no computer or Internet access: I download the feeds from these blogs with a feed aggregator, convert them to html pages and then transfer them into my mobile. Coming Back to my goal for blog renewal, I have many fresh ideas that I hope to implement. Although I have not set specific goals as concerns the renewal, I have a general overall picture of how I wanted to be and what new features and metrics it should obtain. Changes will refer to blog's design. By design though I don't mean blog's appearance and interface exclusively but organisation, new features and functionality as well. Of course the name of the blog and it's URL will change too to reflect something more relevant to marketing and to be eye-catching. Finding a great title is a really tough challenge but I am working on it and I hope that I 'll come up with something good. More details about my ideas and the whole concept will be released in the future. All I want right now is to retain the current enthusiasm and excitement I have and I am sure I will bridge the gap of my absence. Sure I need a lot of feedback and input on this project so everyone is warmly invited to comment, suggest, disagree and join my effort in any way.