Artists.MTV: Smart or Just More Confusion?

It feels a little bit like deja vu. This month Viacom's MTV announced a "MySpace"-like initiative called Artists.MTV.  The basic idea is to provide music artists a centralized place to access MTV's 60 million+ monthly visitors.  Aritsts.MTV will allow musicians to "claim" their sites and upload music, videos, photos, and link their "pages" with social-media accounts and other online shopping carts. "Pages" will go public at MTV's Video...

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Data: Knowing How Your Customers Use Media

I can't say this enough, so I will say it again:  It's all about Data. Another illustration: today the Pew Research Center released the results of a recent survey, stating that less than 10 percent of people are using social media for up-to-date news.  So what does this mean? I think we can gleam a few points: 1) This shows that your customers are probably using Facebook and Twitter for other types of information.  Social media...

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Reality Check: Marketing Defined

Every so often you have to evaluate how you are doing.  If you are a marketing professional, it's your responsibility.  So when is the last time you stepped back, and took a look at what you were doing?  Sometimes the best way to do that is to start with the basic definition of marketing. The simplest definition of marketing I can think of is: Managing profitable customer relationships.  The goals are to attract new customers...

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Media Consumption In A Digital Age: It's One Big Experiment

In the past, there was a silver screen, a few broadcasters, and a lot of paper.  If you wanted to watch something, you sat in front of someone's television or a theater screen.  If you wanted to listen to music, it was on a stereo - home or portable.  If you wanted to read something, or take something with you, it was most likely printed on paper.  You were in your home, in a movie theater, picked up the mail, or you went to...

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