They’re also giving away some great free stuff like seasonal phone messages, Santa Hats and self-adhesive vehicle graphics in the design of Christmas trees or Santa Hats.

The free phone messages are a great idea.

Read the list here

Interesting article at Wired Magazine called Organized Chaos: Viral Marketing, Meet Social Media.

Image from Wikipedia

From Marketing Magazine, 26th October 2009:

“Cheryl Cole’s debut album goes on sale tomorrow. In a bid to get fans to splash out on the CD or download, Fascination Records which is part of Universal, has launched a marketing campaign featuring signed copies and personalised calendar give-aways.

Fascination Records has sent 200 signed albums to Amazon, while Play.com is offering fans a shopping trip offer. HMV.com is giving away personalised calenders with albums and even Orange is offering signed lyrics.”

Read the full article

“Having a website will no longer be enough for driving schools to survive in a highly competitive market and must embrace the opportunity to grow their business using the internet. Whilst many driving instructors don’t even have a Facebook account, those that are well acquainted with the user interfaces on social networking sites have the advantage over their competitors.”

Read more

A Simon Says Profile is an in-depth article about your company; its history, what it does and who its key clients are.

In a competitive marketplace a business profile can be used to differentiate your firm from the competition.

The profile also provides valuable backlinks to your site using your target keywords

The newest business detailed on Simon Says Profiles is Eastcote Sign and Display, a sign-writing company in London that created some of the banners for the Live Aid concert at Wembley in 1985.

App Bank has a simple and intuitive interface which means that non-programmers now have the tools build a Facebook app themselves without engaging the services of a professional.

AppBank is free to use and even pays people to create applications with it.  According to AppBank their top-earner makes $769 a month.  At the moment only users in the USA and Canada can take advantage of the revenue stream from Facebook advertising but that is sure to change in the future.

Whilst AppBank provides the tools to build a facebook app, there will be many businesses where they will still want to hire someone to do this for them. This will enable new companies to provide these development services where ideas people don’t need costly programmers to build their envisioned application.

If you want a Facebook application created for your company, get in touch with Simon Says Media.

With a hat tip to MomGadget.

Photo by Trounce

Scientists have now  discovered that how you write “shows if you’re a liar“. They already know that “people hesitate more when they lie and some companies already use this fact to see how long it takes people to tick boxes when filling in surveys online,” he said.

No doubt as technology evolves it will become easier for the average mortal to determine whether or not he is reading truthful hand-written statements.

Marketing Guru Bill Glazer’s most successful campaign was his hand-written sales letter. If techniques advance to enable us to spot lies more easily, then campaigns like Glazer’s will only work if your pitch is genuine.

Crooked campaigns had better stick to email.

Fashion bloggers were invited to preview and photo-shoot of Arcadia’s autumn and winter lines two weeks ago.

According to the Times, “about 15 per cent of fashion sales are online, a figure that is rising quickly”.

Leon Bailey-Green, the founder of The Online Fashion Agency is quoted by the Times as saying:

“Retailers who fail to take fashion bloggers seriously now will find it difficult to get their attention when they become mainstream”, Mr Bailey-Green said. “It will affect sales.”

Times: Web fashionistas are just a click away from high street acceptance

Yesterday they highlighted a new report published by eMarketer which shows that “59% of brand marketers currently use social media. But within 12 months, that number will swell to 82%. And in the long-run, only 13% indicate having no plans to enter the medium.”

If you’re not using social media to interact with existing and potential customers then you’re missing out on what is becoming a mainstream method of marketing.

Do you need advice on how to market your business with social media? Simon Says Media can help.