Conversational Media Marketing

Below are a list of resources I recommend and either use presently or have in the past. Only those I have experience with and feel confident in recommending make the list. In the interest of full-disclosure on some of the resources I am either an affiliate or reseller. Nevertheless, my previous statement stands.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

I'm the Marketing Director at Bizzuka, so you would expect me to recommend the company. However, I would neither recommend the company or be the marketing director if I didn't believe in the product and the people that stand behind it.

We offer an easy to use Web content management system that anyone, whether they have technical skills or no, can use to maintain and update their Website.

Bizzuka provides custom Web site design and content management services and intranet development services for small and medium sized business throughout the United States.

Our mission is simple, to give small businesses access to the same technology that was previously only afforded by big businesses. And to do it at a price that yields to our clients a return on their investment in months rather than years.

The CMS platform contains over 120 components including calendars, document management, class registration and scheduling, forums, knowledge management, email newsletter, ecommerce and blogs. It's a SaaS-based delivery model as well, so there's no having to worry about downloading and installing updates. The only thing you have to worry about is keeping your site updated.

We also offer a reseller program to advertising agencies, Web designers and marketers.

Contact me if you're interested in learning more.

 

SOCIAL NETWORKING/ONLINE COMMUNITY

WordFrame is at the forefront of a new breed of business communication and social networking tools that include blogs, wikis, people profiles, professional connections, the use of RSS feeds, group messaging and document management which are now known, collectively, as Enterprise 2.0.

We provide a single, secure social media platform that combines all of these technologies in to a web publishing and collaboration environment that is designed to help you build better web communities.

Having used a number of social network/online community platforms (Joomla, Drupal, Awareness Networks, Community Server, etc.) I must tell you WordFrame is the best I've ever seen. It leaves no stone unturned in terms of its ease-of-use, functionality and support documentation. It truly is an Enterprise 2.0 product. 

To see WordFrame at work visit Social Media Today, the Creative Coffee Club  or Goodman Jones Chartered Accountants.

If your company is looking for a powerful social networking platform on which to build a workplace or marketing community, look no further than WordFrame.

Contact me for more information.

 

EMAIL MARKETING

CONSTANT CONTACT

Ready to open the lines of communication? Speak and listen with Email Marketing and Survey by Constant Contact, and begin an ongoing dialogue with your customers, members, or clients. Email Marketing and Survey helps you build strong, lasting relationships.

With Email Marketing you can stay connected and get your message out. Survey lets customers communicate back to you—with new ideas and feedback to better understand and meet their needs. You'll gain a broader, more representative view of what customers or members really think about your products, services and communications.

Survey gives you new insight that helps you gain the focus you need to meet customer needs...and deliver what they want. And with Email Marketing, you can close the communication loop. Your audience will know you listened to them when they receive your targeted, follow-up email communications.

• Create professional email campaigns and online surveys—in no time at all—with step-by-step wizards and more than 200 easy-to-use templates
• Get survey feedback and measure email campaign results in real time with instant tracking and reporting
• Uncover revealing trends and patterns with Survey's powerful filtering option and easy-to-read graphs and charts
• Manage your email and survey lists, and reporting—all in one place with one, integrated Constant Contact account
• Create targeted email lists based on survey response, and follow-up with relevant email communications

Open the lines of communications with your customers or members. Begin a dialogue with Email Marketing and Survey by Constant Contact today! Email Marketing and Survey helps you build strong, lasting relationships.

VERTICAL RESPONSE

VerticalResponse is the leading provider of self-service and customized direct marketing solutions, empowering small and medium sized businesses to build, control and measure their own direct marketing campaigns.

• Whether you're an email marketing pro or just starting out, VerticalResponse lets you create, send and track professional-looking emails quickly and affordably.
• Build, send and track email campaigns in minutes. No contracts, no hosting fees, no monthly fees, no support fees. You only pay for email delivery . . . about a penny per email.
• An easy-to-use web-based tool that gets you up and running with opt-in email campaigns in minutes - and gets your email delivered.
• It's easy to send professionally designed, attention getting emails and then watch as the results roll in.

My wife, Amie, uses Vertical Response with her home staging business and I can tell you it is one of the best email marketing systems I've ever seen and we love the pay as you go plan. The new survey tool is easy to use and works very well.

 

BUSINESS BLOGGING

TypePad Blogs - Get a 14 Day Free Trial!
Typepad is the first blog I ever used and it's the one Conversational Media Marketing is built on. Needless to say, I have great affinity for it. If you're a small business owner, this is a great platform on which to build a blog. (Of course, so is WordPress for that matter.)

 

ONLINE REPUTATION MONITORING

Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool created by friend and colleague Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim.

The truth is, whether you like it or not, people are talking about your company, brand, products or services. They may even be talking about you! Do you know what they're saying? Do you want to know? If so, then you need Trackur.

If you're doing ORM the old-fashioned way (i.e., using Google Reader and subscribing to Google Alerts, Technorati, et al), you'll find Trackur to be way better...and easier.

Using Trackur's sophisticated online reputation monitoring technology, you can easily deploy your own reputation tracking within minutes. You tell the app the names, products, and brands that are vital to you and it scours millions of blogs, news sites, images, and videos for you. If your reputation is being discussed in the social media, Trackur will alert you.

 

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

I've been a huge fan of Basecamp almost since its beginning and have used it for project management for years.

Basecamp takes a fresh, novel approach to project collaboration. Projects don't fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.

Over 1 million people use it to manage projects. In a recent random customer satisfaction survey, 94% of Basecamp customers surveyed said they would recommend Basecamp to their friends, family, and colleagues.

37Signals, the company that makes Basecamp, also produces a Web-based contact management system called Highrise and a personal organizer called Basecamp. Might want to check them out as well.