MDV Interactive » Blog Entry

Gettin’ all “Presidential”

marcidevries — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:06:40 +0000

So next Thursday (June 3) is the Marketing Excellence Awards dinner for the AMA Baltimore, and the official passing of the baton from Luba Abrams to me as president of the Baltimore Chapter. It’s interesting and exciting in equal parts. I’d love to see you all there, if you’d like to come (you don’t need to be a member) please click here and if you want to see pictures of me doing the voice over for the intro movie, click here.

Wish me luck!

Getting Real with Social Media

marcidevries — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:50:01 +0000

There’s Nothing Witty Left to Say; Social Media, Year 3 – A Time for Perspective

An AMA Baltimore event
DATE:
May 26, 2010

FEATURED SPEAKER:
Marci De Vries, President, MDV Interactive

AM SPEAKER SERIES:
Some companies take to Social Media like fish to water. Others struggle with it and don’t feel like it’s the right direction for their company. Marci will take a top line view of whether they are helping or hurting themselves by participating in something that feels so unnatural, and discuss whether they need to approach Facebook, Twitter, and other venues at all.

Designed to be a Breath of Fresh Air in this era of social media peer pressure, Marci hopes to engage the audience in a lively pros and cons discussion about what the market will look like when only *some* companies and organizations choose to participate.

SPEAKER BIO:
With nearly 20 years of Web marketing, Marci De Vries of MDV Interactive specializes in helping companies drive business through an effective online presence. She has dedicated her efforts to measurable results and developing metrics that can quantify not only end sales results driven through marketing but also how effective each step of the sales conversion is working.

De Vries realizes that the Web site is only part of the sales/lead generation equation online, and helps companies optimize their reputation and subsequent inbound traffic every day. She is dedicated to generating revenue as part of any engagement and has helped dozens of companies do this via the Web.

EVENT TIMES:
8:00 – 8:30 Breakfast & Networking
8:30 – 9:30 Presentation and Q&A

RSVP BY:
May 24th

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

COSTS:
Professional AMA Member $ 20.00
Professional Non-Member $ 40.00
Student Member $ 10.00
Student Non-Member $ 20.00

LOCATION:
Morton’s Steakhouse
Sheraton Hotel
300 South Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

PHONE:
(410) 547-8255

PARKING INFO:
Parking provided for $5 in the parking garage attached to the Sheraton

Social Media for Award Programs

marcidevries — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:04:00 +0000

Here’s a link to an article about how the Baltimore Chapter of the American Marketing Association is promoting their annual Marketing Excellence Awards through Social Media. I’m quoted, of course. http://bit.ly/a6AuiD

De-Virtualization

marcidevries — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:33:39 +0000

I admit, I’m dissappointed. My most recent experiment with virtal business/all cloud computing went bust. The final straw was at dinner with my husband and brother where they mocked me openly about how virtual apps weren’t really working for me.

Here’s what I tried:
1) Abandon desktop email software and use only Gmail with domain name mapping
2) Abandon Word/PPT/XLS and use only Googe Docs
3) Abandon paid Web hosting and go with free WordPress deployments hosted on their server

Here’s why it didn’t work:
1) Gmail falls apart when you try to use multiple email addresses. I currently use 6 mapped domains, which means six totally different email addresses. With Gmail, I needed to login/logout of each address account in order to keep my email “to” field clean.

When I tried forwarding all 6 addresses to a general Gmail account, much of my inbound and outbound mail was captured by spam filters so my clients couldn’t communicate with me.

The mail that DID get through was marked “marcidevries@gmail.com on behalf of Marci@mdvinteractive.com” which is a stinky way to brand a tech company, right?

2) Using Google Docs was a hassle because I couldn’t really get regular .doc .xls .ppt files to open correctly in Google Docs. Therefore any document sent by a client wasn’t really readable. I also couldn’t edit and then send them a Google Doc back because Word et.al. doesn’t really open Google Docs correctly.

Which, considering that they didn’t receive my emails anyway (see problem #1) maybe this didn’t really matter. LOL

3) The free hosting by WordPress is really pretty awesome. However, there aren’t enough widgets available to allow the site to do what I want it to do. So frustrating. I am still hosting in the free version, but will probably switch to paid hosting with WordPress as my free CMS in a couple of months.

So there’s my update on Virtualization. The Web is SO CLOSE to being able to actually do this. So close, but yet so far…

Conundrumming

marcidevries — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:20:05 +0000

Not sure how to think about online advertising? You may want to check out this article by Chris O’Hara at Traffiq. It’s an interesting perspective, and (of course) I’m quoted in it. http://bit.ly/cIscrK

Does this ring true for you as you’re looking online marketing for this year and beyond?

Moving Fast – RSS Revisited

marcidevries — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:33:56 +0000

A few years ago, many of you heard me going on and on about RSS feeds and how the Internet was starting to talk to itself to make content move faster. Now there’s a relatively new innovation called PubSubHubub (or PuSH) that’s changing the game again. It’s a different way of doing RSS feeds — like there’s an assistant technology. Anyway, watch the video — it’s easy to understand and fun.

Stay Safe, My Friends

marcidevries — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:38:39 +0000

Just this morning I gave a presentation on Online Reputation Management for the Marketing Director’s Support Group (MDSG). Thanks again to Andrew Rose for his gracious invitation to present here.

The talk was about Online Reputation Management, and I was pretty surprised to see the interest. Here’s the presentation, where I broke it down and made it manageable for marketers at companies large and small, with free tools (and a couple of paid ones too). Check it out and let me know what you think…

Reputation Management as told by Marci: http://tinyurl.com/yd74udn

Keeping it Real

marcidevries — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:15:32 +0000

There’s authenticity, immediacy, and the holy matrimony of the two.
Here’s an interesting finding from my work on the Baltimore AMA board. We revamped the site into a WordPress/bloggy sort of entity, and opened it up for board members to write on, and all of our members to contribute to.

This simple act of Opening the system to everyone has reinvigorated the site, and brought activity that I didn’t think I’d ever see on an association site. The contributions are genuine and interesting, and the response from members as well as non-members has been immediate and awesome. Check out this entry where an AMA member writes about a company she admires, and then that company responds within MINUTES from the Web. Awesome.

Taking it on the Road

marcidevries — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:14:06 +0000

Some of you have been reading this blog/site wondering what exactly I do. If it’s not clear from the few notes I have posted on these pages, come and hear me talk about it live & in person.

I’ll be plugging my mug in front of audiences that you can be part of on these dates:

February 17, 2010 Chesapeake Regional Technology Council
Presentation: Social Branding, the Web and the New Meaning of Love. Location: Loews Hotel, Annapolis MD. Register online here

March 6-7, 2010 Mosaic Weekend Retreat
Presentation: 4 Ways the Web can Enrich Your Life. Location: The Woods Resort, Hedgesville, WV. Register online here WOMEN ONLY

March 24, 2010 MDSG (Marketing Director’s Support Group)
Presentation: Onlne Reputation Management — Embracing “Truthiness” Location: Baltimore MD Register online here

May 26, 2010 Baltimore Chapter of the American Marketing Association
Presentation: What’s New in Social Media. Register here AMABaltimore.org/events

It’s So Simple

marcidevries — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:23:43 +0000

When I left the agency a couple of months ago, I thought I’d need a cadre of hard-core programmers to help set up Web sites and add Web 2.0 functionallity for upcoming Web projects. It used to be a Hurculean effort to put thought and image into a working Web framework, and that’s where we made all our money.

To my amazement, the Web has been building itself and working very hard on becoming so easy and cheap that almost anyone can toss up a Web site (like this one) in a single afternoon for around $50. I found this pretty deflating initially, but instead of reducing my ability sell Web services (old school style), it has actually allowed a better partnership between clients and me. With quick deployment/low cost Web dev, we can all to be more nimble and deploy Web presences that are single-topic focused instead of trying to jam absolutely everything into a singular hog of a Web site.

So far I like this better…