“He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.” – Confucius

I was recently talking to a relative of mine who works for a large, national charitable organization dedicated to helping children. She reminded me of the importance of charitable giving this time of year. We talked about the importance of having a genuine connection to the cause you choose. The more personal the connection, the more time, energy and money are donated.

We also talked about corporate support of charities and the impact that has on consumers. Partnering with a nonprofit can have a significant ROI. Consumers are drawn to companies who are socially responsible and if the partnership is strategic, targeted marketing can reach additional consumers for both parties.

I did some research around consumer loyalty and brand awareness as it relates to corporate social responsibility and found some interesting statistics. According to a study by Cone Inc.:

• 83% of consumers have a more positive image of a product or company when it supports a cause they care about.
• 83% of Americans wish the products, services and retailers they support would support charities;
• 59% of Americans are more likely to buy a product from a company associated with a charity;
• 50% are more likely to donate to a charity that has corporate support.

Here at Netplus philanthropy is encouraged. Employees are given community service paid time off to participate in any charitable activity they choose. Our CEO, Robin Neifield, is on the board of the American Red Cross. Netplus has done pro-bono work for the Red Cross, breastcancer.org, Shirt Off My Back and other non-profit organizations.

Every year Netplus employees participate in the annual toy drive for Support Center for Child Advocates. The Center provides legal assistance and social service advocacy for abused and neglected children in Philadelphia County. You can check out their website at www.advokid.org.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy holiday season!

Today it was announced that Google bought Motorola Mobility, and it was recently announced that Google+ added it’s first 16 games to go head to head with Facebook. But this is not about all things Google. It’s about gaming, search, display, email, mobile, social – yup it’s becoming quite a mish-mash – yes we are having a blast! It can be head spinning and exhilarating . For some though, it is mind boggling and frightening. And no one, no one has it all 100% figured out. It is organic, evolving but what is clear is that digital is rapidly becoming a mish-mash of intersecting channels, escalating opportunities and new challenges.

The industry is quickly becoming not about one digital channel, strategy, tactic or another. We refer to integration although a newer term folks are tossing around is “unbound” but that refers more to the intersecting “unbound” development of digital channels – that must be understood in order to effectively “integrate”. Integration is actively imposed to magnify the impact of the evolving connections – sometimes more effectively then others. We see it, practice it, strategize, brainstorm and execute on it everyday – in the programs we run for clients, in our discussions at trade shows – Read any of the trade news. SEW (search engine watch) reports on mobile, social – almost anything digital and the same for almost any professional organization or publication in our industry. While they may still skew in one direction on another – there is significant spillover – because it is spilling over. Meaning to excel to even be competent in the digital marketing industry you have to have some insight and knowledge about how it all impacts and connects.

Yet oftentimes, the practices of media, social, search, mobile are still silo-ed. Opportunities are missed. “Experts” in certain practice areas must extend their vision and expertise beyond their practice scope to be most effective.  Yes, darn it – it isn’t easy. But it’s been coming for awhile – now here it is – we’re mishing and mashing – having a smashin’ good time.

Whoever works with paid search these days knows what the number’s 25-35-35 stand for. This is the character limit given in Google AdWords standard text ads for the headline, description line 1, & description line 2. But a recent change with how Google handles the ad copy gives marketing professionals the possibility of having your ads show up to 60 characters in the headline.

You as a marketer do not have to change much if anything at all, this change occurs, for the time being, at Google’s discretion. The only changes you might need to make would be putting a period or question mark, in your ad copy. Because the input field character limitations in AdWords are still the same, Google instead looks for clues in the ad copy to translate when it is suitable for it to dynamically lengthen the title with the first description line of the ad. The easy rule to serve is that the the first description line of your copy is a “recognized” sentence, meaning it should “end with either a period”, “question mark” or “exclamation mark”. Google will then automatically append this line following the title input and add a hyphen in between.

Why is Google doing this? Well the obvious reason is they want to help us improve CTR’s, which in turn will help them (Google) make more money. In the beta testing stages of this new enhancement, Google has said they found that the longer ad headlines will help increase CTR, and therefore click volumes. Whether or not this an improved user experience is to be decided at a later stage.

The smart marketers that have read about this technique will take heed of this small but “important” change, and take advantage by making sure that their ad copy is appropriately formatted to qualify for longer ad headlines, at least for testing purposes.

In conclusion, if you use AdWords, it will be valuable to check out if the longer ad titles will work for you or not.

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since I started working at Netplus. It has been an historic decade. So much has happened: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, 2 wars, 2 recessions and 2 presidents (and our first African-American president). With the rise of social media and the rapid changes in technology, it’s truly been a wild ride.

Netplus has been through its changes too. As with any agency, clients and employees come and go and projects and technology change. It’s been amazing to watch the evolution of Netplus and the people that work here. Netplus always manages to meet its challenges and prosper because of the talented and dedicated people that work here.

I am very fortunate to be able to work in an environment with so many people that I like and respect and that treat me so well.

Here’s to the next 10 years!