Source: Social Media Explorer

Infographics are becoming are main stream medium use to effectively communicate within and outside of organizations. There are a number of different ways to use infographics to communicate with employees, management, and other stakeholders within your organization:

Decision-Making

• Use infographics to present comparative lists and to highlight pros and cons. Visual elements make it easier for people to compare and make choices.
• Use information design to expose data patterns and relationships. Visualizing data enables employees to analyze reports more effectively.
• Use infographics in situations where there is not a lot of time to interpret information and where prompt decision-making is required. Infographics help employees digest and understand information quickly and easily.
• Use infographics to visualize important strategic documents, reports, and plans.

Training

• Embed infographics into employee training manuals and guides to make them easier to consume and understand.
• Use infographics to create sets of training cards that can be distributed to employees as a reference tool or used by managers in workshops and training sessions.
• Place large infographics in highly trafficked areas in your organization to offer visual reminders of important ideas, processes, or policies.

Exchanging Ideas

• Use infographics to disseminate important information. Because they are unique and get shared readily, infographics help embed knowledge across the organization.
• Use information design to communicate in diverse internal environments where language or education barriers may exist. Infographics are a universal communication tool that makes it easier to deliver information with less likelihood of misunderstanding.
• Use infographics in meetings and presentations. Visualizations can help employees digest and understand information within condensed periods of time, making it easier to communicate takeaways and next steps more effectively.
• Use infographics in situations where you need buy-in. Infographics facilitate quicker consumption and comprehension of ideas and concepts, making it easier to garner support and obtain consensus from your audience.
• For this and more information on the creative, marketing and digital industry, visit www.socialmediaexplorer.com

Did you know that there were more than 700 different tablets on display at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show? That means there were literally hundreds of new opportunities for businesses to connect with their customers. And the opportunities are only going to increase, as a recent report by Harris Interactive predicted that one in every five U.S. consumers will own a tablet by 2014.

Obviously, the tablet market has made significant strides since the introduction of the original iPad. Now, marketing professionals need to make sure that their strategies and capabilities advance to take advantage of the increasing prevalence of this emerging technology.

For example, consider incorporating business-to-business strategies for high-level marketing and sales pitches. Utilizing tablets can give your business a fresh approach that may help your presentations stand out.

Or perhaps you can take advantage of the mobile and interactive nature of tablet technology to evolve the state of your traditional print brochures and collateral. Imagine not just giving static facts and figures, but presenting prospects with a well-crafted story and an immersive atmosphere facilitated by touch responses and real-time feedback. The possibilities, and the potential, are virtually limitless. 

It is clear that you can do much more with a tablet than play Angry Birds or check the weather. Like print, radio, television and web marketing, tablets represent the next great medium by which businesses can engage their customers and fuel growth.

This week, Paladin participated in the Heartland Mobile Council’s MobileU101 conference. As companies awake to “the year of mobile,” this event discussed strategic approaches to mobile marketing.  But is this really the time of mobile?

Motorola’s Dana Warszona, a panelist, said the mobile tipping point for Japan came about 4 years earlier compared to the US. She and her fellow panelists Andrew Koven, President, E-Commerce & Customer Experience, Steve Madden Shoes and Julie Krueger, Senior Vice President, eCommerce and Direct, OfficeMax felt that the US is just now at that point. They stressed that for retail companies, in particular, this is the time to pull the infrastructure together and to get smart on mobile and to do it quickly. Two-thirds of retailers are already doing mobile or in the midst of implementing it.

They advise moving away from simply the siloed campaign and to develop mobile as a part ongoing strategy and business operation. For consumers mCommerece is coming and it will mean that cash registers and credit cards will become obsolete. Krueger said that mobile will do away with kiosks and that the in-store experience will change radically. Warszona pointed to Best Buy as example of a company that was truly tying mobile into their business operations.

Koven said, “Mobile is the second coming and we’re [Steve Madden Shoes are] going to lead. We’re not going to wait and see.” 

How are these initiative being done? Krueger said that companies are not yet investing in additional human resources needed for mobile. Her current teams are adding it to their work load. But as the tide turns and mobile heats up, we will see companies ramp up the internal resources needed to manage this growth.

Staff, roles and ownership for mobile were reoccurring discussions during the conference. Which departments should own the mobile marketing strategy or execution? Will marketing generalist take mobile marketing on as an additional tool in their tool belt or is mobile best developed and managed by specialists? As Mobile Marketing emerges, we look forward to following this debate and the trends.  We would like your input on the topic. To weigh in, please take our poll - http://tinyurl.com/2bfolsr . We will be happy to share the results with you.

Here are a few recent articles and links related to mobile marketing:

 Mobile Marketers: Just Do Something

Chicago mobile event highlights opportunities of mobile marketing

Heartland Mobile Council

What Apple’s Acquisition of Siri Means for the Future of Mobile Search

Twitter Stream from the event

Whether you are a frequent Twitter user or not, you most likely caught wind of the new Twitter trend known as “Twitter Lists.” It recently launched and I’ve already found it useful for personal use as well as for Paladin. A Twitter List is a new way of categorizing the people you follow and their tweets by your own preference.

Over the past few months, I have helped oversee the social media networks for Paladin with most of my focus on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I find Twitter to be useful as a quick, interactive site to connect with our candidates and clients. The Twitter Lists now help us organize tweets from candidates, clients, marketing/creative/communiations associations, publications, news, events, etc.

Are you ready to create a Twitter List? Well, do you follow someone, but they are often overwhelming your home page and keep you from noticing other updates? Do you follow a variety of tweeters, such as celebrities, news, and job search firms? Are you ready for more organization within Twitter? If so, it’s time to get started! So…how do you create a Twitter List? I’ve listed a simple version, but if you are a visual learner, like me, the website below will give you detailed version: http://tinyurl.com/yjkle2n

1. Click “create a list,” a dialog box should pop up on your screen
2. Name the list to a category you want your followers to fall under
3. Search and start following tweeters under your list
4. Another way to search is to go through your followers’ profiles and click the button on the right labeled “manage lists” and add to your specific list (this option also allows to create a list in case you think of something on the spot!)

Twitter will give you the option of making the Lists private or public. If a List is public, you can follow other tweeters’ Lists and groupings.

Will this make Twitter more confusing? We don’t think so, in fact it makes Twitter more friendly and organized. The guys behind Twitter are predicting it will increase the number of new users. Twitter also promises the the roll out of List descriptions within the next week so public lists are easier to understand and, in turn, create more followers.

Let us know if you have created a Twitter List. Why did you decide to create a list and has it been helpful? @PaladinStaff has already been added on others’ Lists under the labels such as career, HR recruiting, work, etc. We also have started our own Twitter Lists to help us categorize marketing, creative and communication news/updates. Follow our Lists and let us know what you think.

@PaladinStaff/marketing

@PaladinStaff/creative

@PaladinStaff/communications