As 2011 saw Online Marketing move into the #2 spot as Most Influential Media, Social Media continues to be the focus of conversion among business owners and marketing managers. At the same time the topic remains surrounded by confusion. This interview helps clarify it.

Is your business on Google Places? If you want to be found online, it really, really, really (did I say really?) helps.

If you’re a business owner or manager with a serious business you’ll eventually get to the point where the question changes from, “Do I need marketing help?” to “How do I find the best marketing help?” Problem is, finding the best marketing help isn’t so easy.

This will help.

1) See the Work. Many marketing “experts” tend to be great talkers. That’s because they’re often trained sales people vs true marketing pros with the objective perspective, talent, and credentials to do what’s truly best for your business. So, after you hear the sales pitch, analyze the work and invest the necessary time to do that. It’s the best starting point to finding the best marketing help. But, you can’t stop there.

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Our viral video was just kindly described by ADWEEK/AOL’s Fuel the Future as …
“clever and brilliant in its simplicity. It accomplishes for practically no dollars what many agencies can’t accomplish with many millions of special-effects-laden bucks.”

Have a look:

Marketing experts claim it’s easier than ever to market your business. So, why is it so confusing? I address that question and discuss the best marketing solutions to grow your business now and in the months to come.

“My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.”

- Steve Jobs

Considering that Steve said The Beatles were his business model, I suggest reading this:

Back in November, our own personal Aleister Crowley of Cult of Mac, Leander, sat down and interviewed Ken Segall, the originator of the iMac name. According to Segall, Steve Jobs recognized he was “betting the company on the machine and so it needed a great name.” The only problem: the name Jobs had his heart set on was so bad it would “curdle your blood.” The original product name? MacMan, says Gizmodo.

Luckily, at the end of the day, iMac won out… but it wasn’t because Jobs let himself be swayed, according to Gizmodo’s sources, but rather because the name was already trademarked by a company called MidiMan, who had released a serial-to-MIDI adapter under that brand name. Apple made an offer; Midiman declined; Steve Jobs fumed and Segall got his way.

MacMan is, indeed, a blood-curdling name for a computer, but you can see the method in Jobs’ madness: bulbous and colorful, there is something about the original iMac’s design that channels the bouncing fruits of the famous 8-bit ghost gobbler… but it’s a name that would need to be abandoned as soon as the design was changed.

It’s interesting how different the entire Mac brand could be now if not for the serendipity of Jobs’ initial whim being thwarted. The lower case ‘i’ has transcendeded its initial meaning — Internet — and become a brand in its own right: an elegant prefix synonymous with iconic Apple product design.

– John Brownlee (Jan. 14, 2010)

A current poll via LinkedIn