budget Archives - AndreaVascellari.com

Budgets

>> Listen to the audio version to find out additional commentary about the topics discussed in this post!

Download the MP3 file (6.4Mb, 13:21) – Get the show on iTunes!

This is part of a series of posts that explores the “Adaptive Digital Strategy Framework”, an operative guide that I created to plan, execute and manage online strategy programs more effectively and efficiently. Each of post of this series comes with an audio podcast in which you will find the audio version of the post with additional audio commentary about the discussed topics. The name of the podcast is “FIR On Strategy with Andrea Vascellari”.

A budget is an invaluable tool to help us prioritize our spending and manage our finances. Simply put, a budget is a detailed summary of likely income and expenses for a given period. It provides a concrete and organized breakdown of how much money we have coming in and how much we are letting go.

If you are listening to this episode you probably work in communications, design and development, PR or marketing so chances are that when you think about budgets you are looking at several different disciplines like paid advertising, content, product/service marketing, public relations, branding or creative.

To be honest we could talk about budgets all day but as usual it’s not an easy job to research, select, prepare and share with you valuable information that can help you plan, execute and manage your strategic communication plans. So today we are going to focus mainly on two things:
Continue reading “Budgets”

How to avoid “No Strings Attached Budgets”

Have no money to invest in what your business or organization needs the most? This post is part of a productivity series aimed at helping you optimize your budget management.

If you want to save on a budget, you should have a very detailed budget first.

This may seem obvious, but surprisingly many companies don’t have a complete budget written down. Oftentimes, they just have certain budgets, but many of their expenses are typically left floating free without being thoughtfully tied to an actual plan. These sums of money are what I define as “No Strings Attached Budgets”. Continue reading “How to avoid “No Strings Attached Budgets””

Twitter Advertising? 5K. Thanks.

Are you interested in having your ads on Twitter? Yes? Ok, that’ll be at least $5000.
Looking at the ‘natural influence’ of big brands that probably have no need for ads on Twitter vs the 5k minimum budget for smaller businesses and other players that want to make their voices heard it’s certainly something that makes me think.
Beth Harte recently grabbed my attention on this topic with a Facebook update, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this ‘barrier’ at the entrance that Twitter has set.
Andrea

Communications Report for December 6th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Do you want to get these report-updates in real time? Subscribe to the live-report RSS feed! This feed includes only report related items. It’s not a substitute but a complement to my main RSS feed which still remains the official one that brings you all my blog posts.

Online Advertising Sucks – How often do you hear about a traditional mass media company shifting to a “digital first” strategy? Those companies may want to take a look at this…
How the Fortune 500 Use Social Media to Grow Sales and Revenue – The truth is, there are only five different ways the Fortune 500 use social media. Seriously — just five. And once you know what they are, you can figure out which ones would be most useful for your business.
College Students Admit To “Shocking” Text Messaging Habits in Class – According to data released from Nielsen this fall, that age group sends around 1,630 texts per month – roughly three texts per hour.
Research Examines What Motivates People to Comment Online – The study examined user activity specifically to try to gauge the influence of “emotional content” on users’ behavior. Using sentiment analysis, the researchers looked at content, separating “objective” and “subjective”, and then examined users’ responses
How 10 Year Olds Explain Cloud Computing – They explain cloud computing in a simple, clear way. They don’t see limits to the cloud. They see it as infinite, accessible anywhere, any time.
Intelligently silence Gmail conversations with “Smart Mute” – If you enable “Smart Mute” from the Labs tab in Gmail Settings, muted conversations will only appear in your inbox if a new message in the conversation is addressed to you and no one else, or a new email in the conversation adds you to the “To” or “Cc” line. Once you enable Smart Mute, mute behavior will change across all versions of Gmail: web, mobile, Android, etc.
Study: Two-Thirds of Marketers Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing – Just because social media may be a new addition to your marketing mix doesn’t mean email marketing should be eliminated. In fact, social media can help to enhance your email marketing efforts.
The State of Small Business Online Marketing Budgets [REPORT] – According to the survey, 54% of respondents indicated that their businesses currently have websites. Regarding website features, the vast majority (80%) of websites include general business information, while customer service (45%), lead generation (35%) and e-commerce (30%) features trail in at a distant second, third and fourth places. A mere 13% of businesses reported having a blog.
YouTube top search term in Japan for third year running – #trends A survey by Yahoo! Japan of the most used search terms in 2010 has shown that YouTube is still the most popular search term in Japan for the third year running.
How To: Build a private collaboration site on WordPress.com in 5 minutes – #productive & #smart
Introducing the PostRank Facebook Analytics App – This new Facebook analytics application, which will help publishers solve not one, but two problems at once…
Popularity does not equal influence on Twitter: Seeking influence – only one in 318 messages containing an internet address is “retweeted” the researchers found.
Social Media Case Study: Cold Stone Creamery – The payoff goes well beyond greater customer engagement; Cold Stone’s promotions add to the bottom line by moving people from their computers to physical stores.

Communications Report for December 6th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Do you want to get these report-updates in real time? Subscribe to the live-report RSS feed! This feed includes only report related items. It’s not a substitute but a complement to my main RSS feed which still remains the official one that brings you all my blog posts.

Online Advertising Sucks – How often do you hear about a traditional mass media company shifting to a “digital first” strategy? Those companies may want to take a look at this…
How the Fortune 500 Use Social Media to Grow Sales and Revenue – The truth is, there are only five different ways the Fortune 500 use social media. Seriously — just five. And once you know what they are, you can figure out which ones would be most useful for your business.
College Students Admit To “Shocking” Text Messaging Habits in Class – According to data released from Nielsen this fall, that age group sends around 1,630 texts per month – roughly three texts per hour.
Research Examines What Motivates People to Comment Online – The study examined user activity specifically to try to gauge the influence of “emotional content” on users’ behavior. Using sentiment analysis, the researchers looked at content, separating “objective” and “subjective”, and then examined users’ responses
How 10 Year Olds Explain Cloud Computing – They explain cloud computing in a simple, clear way. They don’t see limits to the cloud. They see it as infinite, accessible anywhere, any time.
Intelligently silence Gmail conversations with “Smart Mute” – If you enable “Smart Mute” from the Labs tab in Gmail Settings, muted conversations will only appear in your inbox if a new message in the conversation is addressed to you and no one else, or a new email in the conversation adds you to the “To” or “Cc” line. Once you enable Smart Mute, mute behavior will change across all versions of Gmail: web, mobile, Android, etc.
Study: Two-Thirds of Marketers Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing – Just because social media may be a new addition to your marketing mix doesn’t mean email marketing should be eliminated. In fact, social media can help to enhance your email marketing efforts.
The State of Small Business Online Marketing Budgets [REPORT] – According to the survey, 54% of respondents indicated that their businesses currently have websites. Regarding website features, the vast majority (80%) of websites include general business information, while customer service (45%), lead generation (35%) and e-commerce (30%) features trail in at a distant second, third and fourth places. A mere 13% of businesses reported having a blog.
YouTube top search term in Japan for third year running – #trends A survey by Yahoo! Japan of the most used search terms in 2010 has shown that YouTube is still the most popular search term in Japan for the third year running.
How To: Build a private collaboration site on WordPress.com in 5 minutes – #productive & #smart
Introducing the PostRank Facebook Analytics App – This new Facebook analytics application, which will help publishers solve not one, but two problems at once…
Popularity does not equal influence on Twitter: Seeking influence – only one in 318 messages containing an internet address is “retweeted” the researchers found.
Social Media Case Study: Cold Stone Creamery – The payoff goes well beyond greater customer engagement; Cold Stone’s promotions add to the bottom line by moving people from their computers to physical stores.