I had the pleasure of interviewing the new Board Chair, Bob DeKoning, for the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) the other day and asked him about his vision for OEN and how it can impact business growth and startup success in Oregon. Bob first and foremost made it clear that he is passionate and committed to creating a supportive atmosphere where startups can get the resources they need to thrive.
Bob is a long time Oregonian and a successful repeat CEO at four different companies over the past 16 years. I asked Bob why he got involved in OEN and what led to him ultimately becoming the Board Chair.
Bob explained:
“The reason I considered this opportunity was the fact that in this recessionary time, and with the state of the economy, I felt that there was a chance to make a difference. If we were looking for additional job growth in an environment of high unemployment, that job growth most likely would come from growth in small companies.
I couldn’t think of a better way to give back and help this economy, than to come in and help keep OEN growing, and stimulating this economy, in support of small company management. ”
When Scott Olson first approached me about joining MindLink Marketing, I couldn’t wait to re-team with such a innovative thinker. Scott’s vision for MindLink — and embracing lead nurturing — pushes the barriers of corporate marketing and communications as we know it. It brings together the most innovative online tools and applications to deliver relevant web content that helps our clients regularly communicate, educate and connect with their customers. While most organizations get this, many still lack the resources or expertise to do it effectively.
One of the biggest challenges for organizations today is understanding what tools to invest in that will give them the best return on their marketing investment. Even with more efficient communications and social networking applications popping up overnight, many organizations continue to stick with what worked for them in the past. Unfortunately, the ROI for a lot of traditional marketing programs continues to dwindle from 2% to 0.001% to nil. That’s a lot of time, energy and capital spent for very little return.
Today, too many marketing and sales dollars continue to be thrown into programs that result in large databases of unqualified leads and lost opportunities due to a lack of effective outreach or inadequate follow up, which brings me back to MindLink’s lead nurturing strategy. I look forward to bringing my web content and corporate communications experience on board to help our clients deliver more engaging and informational content that provides value, industry insight, a better return on their marketing investment, and ultimately creates more successful, long-term relationships with their customers. I can’t wait to get started.
I’m very excited to announce that Stan Carlberg, a long time colleague, will be joining MindLink Marketing as our Content Marketing Manager. I have worked with Stan in the past and am excited about getting someone with his energy, talent and integrity on board at MindLink Marketing.
Stan will be taking the lead on developing our lead nurturing and content marketing services for our clients. Ultimately, we are all about helping our clients connect to their ideal customers and fresh, relevant web content is a critical component of that strategy. We help our clients think like editors and not like marketers and deliver content to their customers that has a high value to them and builds long term relationships.
Stan’s background is a perfect fit for what I was looking for for this position. Stan has over 15 years of experience in managing web content and corporate communications strategies for technology companies. I’m excited to work with Stan again and am very excited about the value and experience he will be bringing to MindLink Marketing clients.
From time to time I like to post about software that I am really enjoying using and am getting good benefit from. This time it is a meeting scheduling software, Tungle, and a task management software, Things. Both are quickly becoming indispensable to me in my daily routine.
The founder of one of the clients I work for, Luke Kanies of Reductive Labs, turned me on to Tungle and I’m not going back. It is a perfect tool for determining the time for a meeting between a group of people. Simply go into the application, create a new meeting, select the times you’re available, and send to your invitees. They can choose the times that work for them and Tungle chooses the meeting time and syncs it with your calendar. It is a great time saver when you have a meeting with more than one person, especially outside your own organization.
Things is a simple Mac tool for task management that I have really been enjoying. It isn’t overpowered, but does what it was intended to do really well … track tasks. It’s great if you work on a variety of projects, or in my case with multiple clients as it allows you to keep your items straight and even assign them to fellow team members. If you are looking for a simple task management software I would definitely recommend checking them out.
One of the things that separates good actors from bad actors is their ability to get into character. It’s such an important element of acting that Googling getting into character returns a long list of resources aimed at describing the best way to think like the character they are to portray. The key to success is a deep empathy with and understanding of the background, motivation and situations of the character before they ever attempt to portray that character to an audience.
This fundamental element of acting ought to be a core discipline to every good marketer. In order to communicate effectively regarding their intended prospects, they should first get into character and mindset of that customer.
Need some help getting in this mindset? Here are some steps you should take before planning your product strategy, website or collateral: read more…
Steve Jobs introduced the new iPad to the world yesterday and as you might expect the reaction has been swift and is all over the social media world. Search #iPad on Twitter and you will get a variety of reactions, not too few of which are negative. The top complaints? There are many, but here are a few that I think have merit:
The name – iPad? Really? I love Apple, but this name sucks. iSlate, which was rumored to be owned by Apple is far better. Don’t we have enough childish jokes in the world without this name?
Lack of camera – I especially don’t get this one as I think that video chat would have been a perfect application for this device.
Lack of support for flash – Ultimately this is a device for media consumption and flash remains a prominent component of many websites. Lack of support here will be even more noticeable than with the iPhone.
All this said, I think that most of the detractors are missing the point of the iPad and remind me of the people who complained about the iPhone for not having a built in keyboard, 3G, etc. Netbooks and the like are about media consumption first and creation second. Desktops and laptops will still rule when it comes to creating almost anything ranging from a document to an application. Smaller devices simply aren’t as useful for that function.
Where small devices rule, is consuming media on the go. With this criteria in mind I see no equal to the iPad, bad name and all. The following are my top six reasons I will be purchasing an iPad and there is no device that can even come close to offering me the experience I would get with this device. read more…
I have been involved in quite a few customer interviews lately and I have piece of advice that I would like to share. Be sure to record them. Not only is this a handy way to make sure that you capture all of their feedback but it is a tremendous tool for enhancing the value of the reports you generate to communicate the feedback you have received.
I personally use RecordiaPro with great results for both quality and an output that I can edit. Whether you are running a win/loss analysis, a customer advisory group or are looking for product feedback on new features, a recorded audio clip incorporated into your presentation (I use Keynote because it has great multi-media integration) adds tremendously to the impact of recommendations. There is no substitute for a 1-2 minute clip directly from the customer explaining a particular point or recommendation.
There are all kinds of books and experts who will show you how to use social media and your community to promote your product. Certainly product promotion has changed, the power of advertising has diminished and leveraging the interconnected nature of your user community is a must for a social media launch.
Rather than generate another in a long line of posts of how to do this, I thought I point to a great example of someone doing this right now. Seth Godin is promoting his new book, “Linchpin“, and is leveraging his considerable network to get the word out.
In advance of the launch of his latest book, Seth Godin asked the followers on his blog to contribute $30 or more to the Acumen Fund and in return he would send the first 3,000 contributors an early copy to read and review. I signed up for my copy and should be receiving it this week.
This is a brilliant promotion and leverages grass roots support to get the word out about his book in contrast to traditional costly marketing campaigns. Now, Seth Godin is one of the top bloggers on the net and has a huge following, but here are some things we can all learn about his approach to generating buzz for his new book: read more…
This may be one of the worst examples of a CEO talking about a serious competitor that I have seen. The mocking laugh and outright disregard, for what anyone with any foresight could see was going to be a serious competitor, is inexcusable. If I were a shareholder of Microsoft, which I am not, I would be outside Ballmer’s office with torch and pitchfork for forfeiting a 9 year head start in the market to Apple because of lack of vision.
Want to avoid sticking your foot in your mouth? Here are some guidelines for positioning against the competition: read more…
This week Seth Godin is featuring a collaborative eBook on his blog titled “What Matters Now“. This is an interesting concept and compiles 70 vignettes from “big thinkers” to think about for the coming year. This is easy reading and reminds me of an online version of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Nothing life changing or earth shattering here, but it provides a good read from some writers that I really respect.
We're Mindlink Marketing, a full service startup marketing agency with expertise in social media strategy, web content and research services for the security and fraud management industry.
I had the pleasure of interviewing the new Board Chair, Bob DeKoning, for the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) the other day and asked him about his vision for OEN and how it can impact business growth and startup success in Oregon. Bob first and foremost made it clear that he is passionate and committed to creating a supportive atmosphere where startups can get the resources they need to thrive.
I’m very excited to announce that Stan Carlberg, a long time colleague, will be joining MindLink Marketing as our Content Marketing Manager. I have worked with Stan in the past and am excited about getting someone with his energy, talent and integrity on board at MindLink Marketing. 
