People can’t buy your product or service if they don’t know it exists. That’s where brand awareness comes into play. We’re talking about cranking up the volume on your brand.

For smaller organizations and businesses, brand awareness can be one of the greatest marketing challenges. After all, increasing brand awareness has traditionally meant spending money on advertising. And buying media isn’t cheap.

Well as you may have noted, my blog has been on hiatus for some time. So here’s the scoop.

I started working a ton of hours in July for a local client and really felt too overwhelmed to blog through the summer. Plus I had some other stuff going on in my life. I should have given an update on my blog to at least fill you in, but I really didn’t plan to be away from here so long.

Then at the end of October, I went to work full-time for the headquarters of a global non-profit in their marketing communications department as a copywriter. Very excited about it and love the new gig.

Anyway, my goal for 2010 is to get back on track with regular blogging as my life is settling down again. Thanks for coming back to my blog.

By Kevin McIntosh

Looks like Social Media is getting closer and closer to Santa in terms of having some influence around the holidays.

ComScore Research in Virginia released a report from a survey earlier in December that revealed holiday shoppers were relying more on social media for recommendations on holiday purchases in 2009.

zoltar speaks!

Originally uploaded by House Of Sims

I love the idea of using paid search marketing for testing a marketing campaign with new audiences.

Whether testing headlines, visuals, promotional offers, whatever, through Paid Search, you can do so much in so little time and with a relatively small budget. And best of all, you can learn a whole lot. Theoretically, you can keep tweaking, testing and measuring until your heart is content.

Universities are taking advantage of the opportunity to use Twitter to promote everything from campus events to news and links to press releases related to current news items affecting the respective campuses.

Here are just a few of the universities taking advantage of Twitter:

TWITTER USER NAME – UNIVERSITY

MarquetteU – Marquette University

IUBloomington – Indiana University

princeton – Princeton University

EmoryUniversity – Emory University

Harvard – Harvard University

AuburnU – Auburn University

Stanford – Stanford University

TuftsUniversity – Tufts University

templeedu – Temple University

uiowa – University of Iowa

Is your university on Twitter but not listed above? Let me know and I’ll add it.

5 Ways A Social Media Program Can Help Your Church. This is a free PDF and can be downloaded by clicking here.

NEW: Online 1-hr. mini-workshop-$99*. “Where In The Church Am I?”

For mini-workshop details, click here.

Photo originally uploaded by SOCIALisBETTER

Is there a formula that tells you if it’s time for your brand to engage in social media marketing?

By Kevin McIntosh

If you know your audience is online and you’re wondering if social media marketing is for you, here are 10 questions you might ask yourself to see if you’re ready for the social media marketing journey.

Showing off my copywriting skills a bit

Sometimes, I think we can get all caught up in the seriousness of information exchange and such with social media marketing and using all the buzz words like “Listening” and “Conversations.”

So the promo image I created above (thanks to a great photo by Jimmy_Joe on Flickr) is my little exercise this morning to lighten things up a bit as I’m working on my presentation, “The Social Media Marketing Journey” to document my social media marketing process for clients and prospects. I guess this is me being “Transparent” and “Authentic.”

-Kevin McIntosh

Kevin McIntosh has 20 years marketing and branding experience. He shows companies how to use branding and social media to build digital word-of-mouth. He lives in the Nashville market.

Photo by kevindooley

Summary:

Business Is More Competitive Than Ever

Customers Are Spending More Time With Social Media

64% Of Best In Class Companies Plan To Spend More On Social Media Marketing In 2009 Than In 2008

To Compete, Businesses Must Take A Fresh Look At Their Marketing Strategies And Channels

Will It Blend?

In late 2006, Utah-based Blendtec spent around $50 to launch a series of videos in which the company CEO, Tom Dickson, does a simple product demonstration of the Blendtec brand home and commercial blenders. He uses their blenders to grind everyday household objects including golf balls, soft drink cans, a Hannah Montana doll and an iPhone.