By Samuel J. Scott

A lot of business and marketing is impossible to measure quantitatively but still widely regarded as valuable. Take branding, for example. Companies spend millions on logos, product appearance, communications, and guerilla marketing – among countless other tactics – to ensure that consumers think of a desired connotation when they think of a brand. It’s not a cheap endeavor – it can take years to build a solid brand.  Read more...

By Daniel Goldstein

If you live in the Boston area, you have a chance to win a free Dunkin’ Donuts deli-sandwich each day this month – if you use your smartphone to take pictures or answer trivia questions through the company’s mobile applications. Orvis, an outdoor-apparel firm, is engaging loyal customers through smartphone apps designed for the upcoming holiday season. Frozen-yogurt franchise Yumilicious is sending tailored promotions and loyalty offers to customers’ mobile phones.

These are just a few examples of companies that recognize the forthcoming dominance of mobile-based marketing.

What is your marketing department doing?  Read more...

By Daniel Goldstein

Internet-marketing news breaks each day, if not each hour, so online marketers need to keep abreast of the latest headlines. Here’s what we at The Cline Group found interesting this past week.  Read more...

• Google +1 shares can now appear in your Google+ social-media account. In two prior posts, we addressed how Google +1 will affect SEO and SEM and how Google+ (Google Plus) will affect Facebook and social media in general. Now, Google has announced that people can have their +1s (“likes”) appear in their Google+ account – along with specifying which “circles” will see them. For example, if I like a certain article on social media, I may choose to share it with my “Work” circle and not my “Family” one. (I don’t think Grandma would be interested.) The marketing takeaway: It is becoming increasingly important to incorporate Google +1 and Google+ into your social-media marketing.

By Josh Cline

In a prior post entitled “You’re on the First Page of Google – Now What,” we warned traditional and online marketers not to think of search-engine optimization (SEO) and search-engine marketing (SEM) as digital Holy Grails that will magically bring profits. The same is true for social-media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (despite the doubling of the latter’s stock price after its recent IPO).

Just as owning a website was not enough to survive the dot-com boom (does anyone remember Pets.com?), so does the use of search-engine keywords or a Facebook page by itself not guarantee instant success today. Quality marketing has always involved – and always will involve – the use of different methods for different purposes.  Read more...

By Josh Cline

In today’s environment, entrepreneurship within the start-up community is booming. High-tech, mobile, clean-tech, and bio-tech firms are showing enormous growth in ideas, products, and solutions that will make a different in today and tomorrow. Unlike the good ol’ days of the late ’90s or the better days of the mid-2000s, the ability to launch ideas is facing new hurdles. In the Israeli start-up community, the problem is that pre-seed and seed money is as dry as the desert, and only a few will find drinking water.  Read more...

By Josh Cline

Social media is a tool. It is a channel, like a newspaper or radio; a media channel and a communication channel. What does this mean for public relations practitioners?

One of the main reasons to hire a public relations agency is because they have the connections with the media, industry-knowledge and know how to communicate a message. They aren’t just relying on a media database, but have real relations or the know-how to build others. PR practitioners gain these relationships primarily through networking, whether it’s a cocktail party, industry event, or trade show. Public relations agencies succeed because of their personal relationships with journalists, other influencers and new relationships they know how to cultivate.  Read more...