Distributor News

No matter how you slice it, reaching out, connecting and having conversations with customers online costs a business owner time and money. Could your social-media efforts be yielding better results?

Here's a list of the biggest mistakes I've seen business owners make with social media and how to avoid them.

1. Talking One-Way: Many business owners start posting status updates because they think that is all they need to do to grow their company online. But the way they do it cuts off any chance of having a two-way conversation. In today's messaging marketplace, consumers want to be heard.

PPAChicago is proud to announce its newest 2011-2012 elected board members: Jessica Gibbons from North American Corporation, Bill Petrie from Summit Marketing, Bruce Schermerhorn from Beacon Promotions and Peter Wiggins from ESP Inc.

The worst Texas drought in more than a century has left cotton-crop conditions that rival the Dust Bowl of the early 1930s, forcing farmers to abandon more fields than ever before.

Most growers will at least break even this year from insurance claims, with the reimbursement rate on policies higher than the price of New York cotton futures, according to a Bloomberg News survey of seven analysts, brokers and farmers.

Converting Facebook's 750 million active users to Google+ will be a long, difficult battle for the search giant. But converting brands to Google+ will be much easier if Google+ is able to solve advertisers' biggest problems with Facebook—such as post-click engagement tracking, paid search inefficiencies and limited customization.

Advertisers drive paid media to their Facebook Pages because they want to be where their audience is, but there's a major flaw in this strategy. Advertisers can't track post-click engagement of non-Facebook ads driving to Facebook, and that's a huge disadvantage in qualifying traffic and uncovering valuable user insights.

Wow, your kids have busy social lives—who's their corporate sponsor? It may sound crazy, but it's starting to happen. Kids who are involved in a lot of after-school sports and activities tend to interact with lots of other kids, which has advertisers drooling and uttering their favorite words—untapped market.

Weetabix, a popular cereal brand in the U.K. (think super-sized Frosted Mini Wheats, minus the sweet, frosted side), recently sponsored 15 kids from around England who have busy extra-curricular schedules. The kids are each being paid £242.43, about $400 U.S., to wear Weetabix clothing on their busiest days of the week.

InnerWorkings Inc., Chicago, a leading provider of global print management and promotional solutions, reported results for the three months ended June 30, 2011.

Annie Xu, general manager for Alibaba.com U.S., discusses the company's future plans, as well as the role of e-commerce and the global marketplace within the promotional product industry.

PPAI unveiled the PPAI Promotional Products TurboTest online product safety tool at this week's National Leadership Conference and Product Safety Summit in Denver, Colo.

The Consumerist recently met with CPSC chair Inez Tenenbaum to discuss how the commission works with manufacturers on everything from the recall process to new standards on lead and drop-side cribs, and why some within the commission are attempting to scuttle its new products database.

ON ISSUING A RECALL:
Most of our complaints come directly from companies. If they know that someone's had a problem with their product, [the company] has 24 hours to report that to the agency. Most of our recalls are voluntary. A company comes to us, we work out a press release, and they voluntarily recall it.

The Coshocton Tribune published a piece discussing Coshocton's place in promotional products history. Going back to the founding of W.W. Shaw and Co. advertising company in 1884, the newspaper discusses a number of businesses and innovations from the town.

From the article:
"There are several competing stories about the beginnings of the industry. Some folks say the first specialty advertising was on small candy boxes. Others insist it began with printed ads on horse blankets. The most common story is the advertisement of Cantwell Shoes on children's burlap school bags was the first specialty publicity to begin the industry in Coshocton."