social media

Borenstein Group, Top Washington DC Branding Agency, Donates 10,000 Nutritious Meals to Houston Food Banks in Support of Children Affected By Hurricane Harvey

September 6, 2017 by Gal Borenstein Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON, DC –Borenstein Group, digital branding agency, today announced it has donated 10,000 nutritious meals to children in Houston through The Outreach Program, a national charity that helps combat food insecurity by facilitating delivery of pre-packaged resilient food to communities in need in the U.S and abroad. The meals are expected to arrive during the week of September 10^th, 2017 to a local Food Bank.

“At this time of utter devastation in Texas, having sufficient supply of nutritious food for impoverished children who have lost so much, is a small but meaningful step toward combating food insecurity and helping support the people that need it most in Houston and the surrounding affected communities. While recovery may take a long time, this was something we felt we could do immediately,” said Mr. Gal Borenstein, Borenstein Group’s Founder & CEO.

The 10,000 tasty meals are packaged and fortified with protein and include rice and beans, pasta with Italian tomato basil sauce, deluxe macaroni and cheese, minestrone soup, and apple cinnamon oatmeal that meet or exceed the national standards for daily nutrition guidelines for children.

See the link to Outreach Program’s menu of meals at http://outreachprogram.org/our-meal-varieties Based in Union, IA, The Outreach Program is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) corporation that organizes food packaging events around the country. With more than 300 million meals packaged to date, the organization’s mission is to provide food, safe water, education, and medical care to those in need at home and abroad. You can learn more about how your corporation can donate at http://outreachprogram.org/

About Borenstein Group:

The Borenstein Group is a Washington DC-based integrated digital branding agency that offers full-services including creative, integrated marketing, digital branding, strategic social media and public relations for B2B and B2G organizations. Voted as 2017 B2B Top Shop by Chief Marketer, it has been named one of the top 15 digital agencies in the United States with an exemplary record of service by Clutch, an independent research, and analysis firm that identifies nationwide top service providers and solutions firms that deliver results for their clients. Its brand tagline is Making Creativity a Science. ^SM

Media Contact: Mr. Gal Borenstein, (703) 385-8178 x28, gal@borensteingroup.com

Six Ways to Boost the Value of Your Case Studies for Higher Marketing Impact

June 22, 2017 by Gal Borenstein

Your most innovative applications and far-reaching solutions with the biggest ROI can be used aggressively to help your company reach its sales objectives.

B2G and B2B Case studies can have a measurable impact on your company’s sales pipeline. Are you leveraging them for maximum ROI? They have the potential to touch prospects in various stages. At The Borenstein Group, we come across many companies that have great past performances that never see the light of day in the form of a well-written case study, thus, failing to share with the decision makers the ‘how’ behind their success.Just like fine art, if no one sees it- your best and most valuable stories may go unappreciated, sitting at your capture manager’s share drive, unless brought to life.

Here are some ways you can make use of these powerful tools, including some new ideas for even the most seasoned marketing pros.

1. Begin with the bottom line in mind. The best case studies are the ones with the most compelling ROI. The most sophisticated technologies and innovative solutions only matter if they can impact someone’s bottom line. For commercial clients, that often means costs saved and profits increased. For government clients, the ROI may be based on strategic outcomes, better positioning for funding, compliance achievements or other objectives. Think strategically about the products or services you want to aggressively promote and ensure that the outcome is clear and compelling.

2. In general, be specific. Good case studies enable prospects to place themselves in the position of the client whose success you’ve profiled. To do this, they must be able to relate. The problem being solved should be both specific enough to tell a story, yet broad enough to appeal to a greater audience. A government buyer is going to be far more interested in how you helped a peer agency succeed than they are in how you helped a hospital. One way to accomplish this is to target your case studies to industries or market segments. But the rule of thumb is to make it easy for the prospect to put themselves in the shoes of the client. It’s basic sales. Give the buyer a reason to qualify themselves out of your solution and they’ll take it.

3. Make marketing the champion. Case studies work best when they have a marketing focus. They lose their luster when prepared by proposal departments and technical professionals. They are ultimately sales tools and must be framed in that manner. Technical professionals may provide good content, but sometimes the “so what?” question is missed. Marketing people do the best job of asking the right questions.

For example, we interviewed the customer of a client on how their flagship product helped the business. We asked the same question a few different ways before getting to the “aha!” The product was instrumental in helping the small business increase five-fold in 1½ years. This story usually won’t tell itself. It requires tact and skill in extracting it from executives and technical staff.

4. Determine the impact on the sales process. So you have dynamic studies of how you’ve dramatically improved the lives of the people who buy from you. How will you use these studies to ensure these amazing examples reach the people who haven’t bought for you, but should?

Here’s the take-a-step-back-and-look-at-the-big-picture question. What should case studies do for your company? If the prospect is unfamiliar or less familiar with your firm, should case studies be early on in their experience? Then consider adding them prominently to your homepage. Make them part of lead generation activities. Include them in materials at conferences and post-conference follow-up communications.

Case studies should certainly be part of your sales materials. But consider the presentation. Many companies use them as one-page slicks. Others use a broader brochure approach that can make a greater impact to a wider audience. This is a single piece that conveys the impression that you are immersed in a particular industry, federal agency or line of business.

5. Expand your base. These stories can also be re-purposed into press pitches by targeting specific industries or pubs that accept by-lined articles. Your greatest story with the most solid ROI and tales of innovation can be converted into abstracts for speaking proposals. Both of these are fantastic examples of reaching outside of your prospect and customer databases.

6. Let your customers speak for you. One of the smartest ways we’ve seen to extend your case studies is to utilize them as video testimonials. Get a few of your best customers and let them speak about what you did for them—on camera. Granted, this will take some out of their comfort zones, but you can make it worth their while. More and more companies are using this tool very effectively. Customers can speak more powerfully than even our best sales reps. Think about how much value you could get out of these—on your web sites, at trade shows and conferences, during sales meetings, at road shows and so many other marketing opportunities.

Not every project or sale can be converted into a show-stopping case study. But your most innovative applications and far-reaching solutions with the biggest ROI can be used aggressively to help your company reach its sales objectives. Best of luck as you tell your client success stories to the world.

If you need help extracting more value from your case studies, or need to build a new arsenal of effective past performances, Borenstein Group can help. Reach out via the web, or by phone at 703-385-8178.

Top 10 Strategic Imperatives for Social Media Success in 2016

January 6, 2016 by Gal Borenstein Leave a Comment

As 2016 rolls in, social media is no longer the stepchild or shiny object in your communications strategy. It plays a pivotal part in allowing your organization to spread the word strategically, protect and improve your brand’s reputation, inspire your fans and customers, and align with the overall corporate mission, objectives, and goals of your organization. If you are a corporate communicator, this is your time, to seize the day and the big data and embrace the opportunity to apply strategic imperatives to your social media strategy and ensure your critical messages do not remain a lone tree in the forest that no one can appreciate. Here are Borenstein Group’s 10 Strategic Imperatives for Social Media Success in 2016 as featured in Communication World Magazine.

Go Mobile or Go Home.

In the past, most corporations could get away by posting links from their Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn accounts to their corporate websites that were not responsive and compatible with smartphones and tablets. In 2016, most studies are showing that if your corporate website is not mobile-friendly, your social media nuggets of gold will be rendered useless as prospects will leave your site quicker than you can click ‘delete’ on your keyboard. Bottom line: before you deploy any social media campaign, ensure that your organization has upgraded to a mobile friendly and responsive design. If you are not sure, just take your CEO to a conference room, open up your homepage on your tablet and ask him to find his profile. That works really well to get executive buy-in if all else fails.

Integrate SoMo Strategy unto Your Multichannel Marketing Plan.

Your Social media strategy plan cannot succeed if it is disconnected or misaligned from the rest of your online multi-channel marketing plan. At all times, you must stay true to your corporate brand and use the social media tools available as an extension of them. Be creative, but stay consistent with your brand voice. Second, before you begin planning your multichannel marketing strategy, be sure to map out your company’s or organization’s goals in advance. Goals could include creating brand awareness, building relationships, generating leads, growing authority, improving interactions, promoting a product or increasing sales.

Align Your C-Suite’s Mission, Goals & Objectives with The Analytics & Metrics They Care About.

Let’s be real: when was the last time your corporate boss said “I LOVE our social media’s return-on-investment! This really helped us GROW this quarter!” If you are being honest with yourself, chances are the answer is slim to none. The majority of us have never experienced joy when it comes to explaining social media ROI metrics to a corporate executive like a CEO, CFO or CIO. While, in the past, one could claim that there were very few tested marketing and social media automation systems that allowed you to capture meaningful analytics and metrics, 2016 is changing the game. You can now use Big Data analytics to measure anything about which your corporate c-suite is skeptical.

From levels of digital engagement to potency to velocity to repeat visits and downloads of the CEO’s white papers or links to influential third-party validation sites, there are no excuses in 2016 not to measure. What should you measure first, second and third? Measure what your corporate management cares about, not what’s cool in the digital water cooler. Most importantly, if you finished your social media plan and you cannot identify anything that’s relatable to sales, marketing, recruitment and corporate social responsibility, consider a re-do. You are not done yet. Remember, nothing could be more frustrating than having a big win in social media engagement than having your boss say ‘so what, that is not our target audience, irrelevant.’

Develop & Implement a Scoring System for Social Media Postings Aligned with Your Organization’s Business Objectives.

Let’s face it: not all metrics are created equal and not every social media posting on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn or vine is going to be important to you or your company. In order to avoid meaningless reports of the number of “mentions” and “retweets”, without assigning a level of importance, you can create a simplified scoring scale from 0-10 in what you’d consider successful and impactful for your organization on social media. For example, your can determine the top three impact data points that your CEO, CFO, and CMO agree and align with, that are worth the company’s time. Remember, you do not want to be the professional that floods your management reports with meaningless metrics of “apparent success.” Analytics is here to help, but please don’t lie with statistics but asking the wrong questions.

Promote Your Corporate Social Responsibility Brand: Doing Good Works Well on Social Media

Because of the viral nature of social media and the capacity to share moments of joy, one of the most critical investments you could make is to ensure your corporate social responsibility initiatives are not happening on a desolate island or being posted only after an event has already happened. They say that no good deed goes unpunished, but what if – by the power of social media – a company’s good deeds could instead be rewarded? Bad news may travel fast, but through the power of social media, these days, good news travels even faster.

For example, AARP, not your average millennial social media membership profile, has managed to garner tremendous national publicity via social media by actually promoting their partnership with Outreach Program, a non-profit 501 (c)(3) corporation that organizes food packaging events around the country. With more than 300 million meals packaged to date, the organization’s mission is to provide food, safe water, education, and medical care to those in need at home and abroad. More than 5,000 AARP volunteers and employee’s packaged over 1.2 million Outreach Program Rice and Bean Casserole meals in Washington, DC on Friday, September 11, 2015, to help feed hungry seniors and veterans in the DC area.

In essence, going viral, or even having a healthy social media community, is more than just scheduling a few tweets or posting photos on Facebook. Curating content, looking for opportunities, and effectively communicating your story is key.

Stay Strategically Relevant: Connect Your Brand to Real-Time News Narratives.

In yesteryear, the right thing to do was to stay within the lines of your dogmatic brand guidelines to avoid conflict and to get any attention that isn’t in the ‘interest of the corporation’. It allowed corporations to communicate with little to no emotional connection to what is really going on the world. However, in 2016, social media is where the buzz is inspiring people to learn about your company in real-time. For example, when a major refugees’ crisis became the dominating headline, did your company have an internal tag-team to consider how to leverage your brand in social media? I am not advocating taking political positions as much as making it clear that your corporate social media strategy includes being attuned to what would make a positive impact to your company’s image online.

Validate That Your Leadership’s Personal SoMo Accounts Aren’t in Conflict with Your Corporate Accounts

Truth be told, not every organization has a pithy, enthusiastic, social-media friendly CEO. Conversely, many organizations have CEOs that are tweeting their opinions from personal accounts without regards to the company’s social media brand perception, creating chaos and inconsistency between the brand you want to present to the world, and the brand that is being hijacked by personal political views to major misspellings that go worldwide in seconds. Because the distinction between Personal & Corporate social media is inherently gone, your 2016 social media strategy must fully align with the corporate interests of your organization. For example, it doesn’t matter how good you do with the corporate account if unflattering pictures of your CEO on a beach vacation, drunk at a local watering hole, make the ‘Twitter machine’ explode with expletives of #WTF.

Be Ready: Develop a Social Media Disaster Preparedness Plan

It is not a question of if, but when. Whether it is a security breach that affects millions of your customers, or a negative recorded customer service experience that went viral on the web, natural or man-made brand disasters will strike your corporation, and your corporate brand that stood for trusted & reliable will unravel before your very eyes. Unless you are prepared to handle crisis communications in the digital age of instant citizen journalism and social media rumors that travel the world faster than you can type, you are already behind on digital emergency preparedness.

Within hours of any public event that get publicity, whether it’s a security breach exposing credit cards at a healthcare insurance company, or a bad customer service call of a cable provider that goes viral in a bad way, social media was filled with livid postings by customers that already blame your brand for slow response on social media, while internet trolls are posting more disparaging remarks about your brand in real-time. The biggest takeaway is that, unlike in the past, when we would all be waiting to see what CNN or Fox would be reporting, your corporate brand is no longer owned by a controlled narrative. It is owned by anyone with a social media account, qualified or not, that can vilify or defend your trusted brand. It is clear that being ready isn’t optional anymore.

What does it mean to be ready? It is called Digital Preparedness. You cannot control social media brand disasters before they happen, but here are proactive strategies you can enact right now to mitigate potential hazards lurking in the distance. At the minimum, since most social media explosions go from zero to 100 really quick, establish a Virtual Command Control Center for Emergency Communications Between the C-Suite, Social Media & Corporate Communications. Often, in times of crisis, executives rely on or hide behind their communications directors to take care of the outside noise from media.

However, without access to the certain leaders in charge of the crisis, whether it is information security breach or catastrophic failure, communications professionals cannot help you unless they got some facts about the who, why, what and where. In the age of available marketing automation suites, it is easy to create an escalation process that allows you to contain communications and ensure there is easy access to decision makers. Most importantly, don’t allow others to define your brand because you were not prepared or overly conservative and cautious. No response is a form of a response in today’s fast moving digital media age and it could make or break your brand more forcefully than any cosmetic fixes or updated customer services policies would.

Recruit & Engage a Social Media Employee Advisory Council

In most organizations, social media is still viewed as the new shiny object that is highly coveted, but one must be aware that if your social media messaging and brand ambassadors are not included and don’t give you the necessary ‘buy in’ on your messaging, you are simply creating an ineffective strategy. The solution is to recruit from within employees that can form a monthly brown bag luncheon to discuss what they’d like to see the company communicating about in different areas. By making them part of the process, as early as possible, you can be assured that you will have additional ambassadors to promote your messages through a multitude of social media channels as well as avoid having a giant disconnect from the cadre of believers in your company’s digital brand.

Make your social media messaging indispensable to your target audience.

Social media power comes with a mission of creating quality content that people care about. In 2016, the excuse that the only ‘approved’ messages from corporate are about account wins, new hires and company picnics is void of connection with the real-world. Successful companies use social media to create engaging content, no matter their field, to amass new fans and customers by offering up tips, how-to guides, funny meme’s that speak to their unique audience, and usage of un-contrived videos that show the authenticity of your organization. Your plan must strategically emblazon the word ‘what’s in it for my prospect on social media’ before any and all postings are promoted. If that answer isn’t clear, you got a loser on your hand.

About the Author: Mr. Gal Borenstein is the Chief Strategy Officer and CEO of Borenstein Group, a top digital marketing communications firm in the Washington DC metropolitan area that serves clients locally and globally. He is a recognized expert and strategist in digital branding, marketing, social media, advertising, online reputation management and public relations matters. He is the author of the new business leadership book, ACTIVATE! How to Power Up Your Brand to Dominate Your Market, Crush Your Competition & Win in the Digital Age, available in premiere bookstores and on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles and Apple’s iBooks

Top 10 Digital Branding, PR & Marketing Trends For 2016

Another article with Gal Borenstein talking about digital trend- http://www.itbusiness.ca/blog/3-cmo-trends-for-2016-show-how-digital-disruption-is-evolving/63828

Top Mobile Trends of 2013 Causing Blurred Lines in Business & Consumer Communications: The Mobile Webvolution is Now

August 16, 2013 by Gal Borenstein

Top Mobile Trends of 2013

Look around you right now. How many people can you find staring into their hands? Some laugh intermittently. Some stare intently. You may even be reading this on a handheld device right now. Let’s face it: the mobile webvolution is upon us. Today, the use of mobile web is having a profound effect on business and consumer communications.

Back in 2008, mobile devices accounted for less than 1 percent of global Internet traffic. This year, the average American spends around 2.5 hours each day on mobile devices, accounting for nearly 20 percent of total web access around the world. Fueled by mobile trends, smartphones are outselling “dumb phones,” tablets are outselling smartphones, and both smartphones and tablets are outselling computers. One would be hard pressed to find a professional who did not have a smartphone, tablet, or even both.

Does your company understand the importance of a strategic professional mobile presence? Are you prepared to cater to what TIME Magazine has dubbed the, “Me Me Me Generation?” Here are the top mobile trends of 2013, and why they matter to your business:

Microblogging

Though traditional word of mouth still plays a role in standard business practice, microblogging has quickly become the easiest and most effective way to promote your brand.

Microblogging has taken the mobile world by storm. Twitter is dominating the web with a user base that makes up over 21 percent of the global Internet population. Our world is adapting to this culture at an astounding rate: in the second half of 2012 alone, Twitter experienced a 40 percent growth in active monthly users.

The fundamental piece of microblogging is you: the user. With the influx of easy-to-use technology, anyone—from Baby Boomers to Millennials—can become a mobile blogger. Personalizing your business enables you to increase customer loyalty, grow your customer base, track marketing effectiveness and keep interested parties up to date with real-time information. 97 percent of the top companies in the US and UK tweet an average of 30 times a month. User engagement with a brand is 78 percent more likely when the business tweets at all, and B2B companies that tweet regularly receive 47 percent more online traffic than those who don’t.

Whether you are tweeting to welcome a new partner or researching hash tags to develop a strategic social media campaign, developing a strong microblogging presence provides your business the opportunity to connect with millions of people and businesses around the world.

Mobile Shopping

With the average professional having over 40 applications on their smartphone, shopping apps have made the act of shopping easier than ever. While this might not be good news for your wallet, the simplified process of gaining access to goods and services with mere taps of the finger opens the door for businesses to capitalize on purchases made via mobile devices.

From 2011 to 2012, US mobile sales rose over 80 percent to $24 billion. According to mobile responsiveness pioneer Brad Frost, simplifying and streamlining your messaging is the key to reaching this emerging audience. Mr. Frost remarked, “Mobile users will do anything and everything desktop users will do, provided it’s presented in a usable way.”

Recent studies have shown that 81 percent of smartphone purchases are spontaneous and nearly 60 percent of consumers will bail on a process if a mobile site does not load within three seconds or less. People expect mobile websites to load as fast, if not faster than on a computer.

Mobile Music

This mobile boom is not just affecting shopping and blogging. From mix-tapes to CDs to MP3s, the way we share and listen to music has always been constantly evolving.

From 10 million users in January of 2012 to over 180 million in 2013, the domineering international sound company, Soundcloud, now reaches more than 8 percent of all web users. Alex Ljung, co-founder of Soundcloud, has referred to his online music phenomenon as the “YouTube of audio.” These music lovers are uploading over 10 hours of sound per minute from all over this world, and even from outer space!

While Soundcloud makes it easier upload music to the web, the nearly 10-year-old Pandora has doubled in size since 2011, surpassing 200 million registered users this April. While only 15 percent of listeners sported Pandora on mobile devices in 2009, over 70 percent of subscribers rely on the mobile app in 2013.

According to a Juniper study released in April, mobile-streamed music revenue will rise more than 40% by the end of this year. With the surge of streaming apps such as Spotify, and the combination of music and social media, this trend is music to the ears of billions around the globe.

Mobile Gaming

Music is not the only source of entertainment that users are incorporating into their mobile devices. Over 30 percent of the time the average American spends on mobile devices is dedicated to gaming. This is the #1 use of smartphones and tablets.

Video games are being played by more than two-thirds of all web users. Of those users, 53 percent played weekly on a smartphone or tablet, considerably higher than the 42 percent playing on consoles and 29 percent playing on social networks.

In June, the International Data Corporation and App Annie collaborated to produce a report on the Future of Mobile Gaming. Released at the 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo, the report found that mobile gaming is expected to grow 55 percent in the next 18 months while software, upgrades, and in game advertising is poised to bring in $12 billion in revenue by the end of this fiscal year.

Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is on the cutting edge of this ‘webvolution,’ and has the potential to be the most profitable avenue for any business. Here’s why:

According to a study done by the US Interactive Advertising Bureau, global mobile advertising revenue recently increased by 82.8 percent: from $4.84 billion in 2011 to $8.85 billion in 2012. So far, 2013 has proven that this massive upswing is no fluke.

Take, for example, Facebook. The top social media service initially offered their stock to the public at $38 per share. In September of 2012 the stock was at $17.73. At that seemingly disastrous point, Facebook moved forward with their mobile advertising strategy.

Instead of putting in advertisements for users to click through, Facebook snuck ads into the news-feed, where people could scroll right over them. Not everybody just scrolled on by. Mobile ads accounted for 41 percent of Facebook’s total revenue in the second quarter of 2013 and this caused the stock to skyrocket to over $37 in July. By integrating adverts into playlists, the 140 million mobile Pandora users netted the music streaming company over $220 million in advertising revenue in 2012, and are expected to bring net advertising revenue of nearly $500 million by 2014.

So what does all of this growth in mobile blogging, shopping, music, gaming and advertising have to do with your business? Everything.

As services like Facebook, Twitter, Pandora and others increase their mobile advertising, and the growth of mobile gaming and the app world, mobile ad spaces are gaining value and reaching millions, if not billions of people every day. Integrating Google Analytics and Facebook Graph Search will help your business strictly define your audience and enable you to enhance your online presence.

These trends have changed the way businesses need to look at mobile. As nearly 1.5 billion people are accessing the web from mobile devices, and people are spending an increasing amount of time on their smartphones and tablets, the opportunity for revenue growth is practically limitless. Within the next few years, mobile devices will be the most used platform for just about everything: from shopping and blogging to music and gaming – to blogging about the hot new game that you just bought on your smartphone while watching Robin Thicke’s summer hit, Blurred Lines, on your tablet.

Right now, more than 90% of the professional population of the United States has a mobile device within arms reach.

How will your business reach them?

To discuss ways to maximize mobile impact for your business or brand, please give us a call at 703-385-8078.

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