Weekend Special – Marketing the Carbon Tax?

This first Weekend Special is in part a tribute to the tradies out there that put off work around the home and to the chef who still gets his/her partner to prepare the family meal.

Advising small business clients on the power of blogging is something that I do daily. In these conversations there’s often a response ‘But how often should I blog?’ at which I respond, ‘well it’s best to have a regular anchor blog perhaps once a week’. But surprise, surprise I haven’t been able to do that myself. So here it is, what hopefully is the start of a regular Weekend Special.

IF ONLY

You get just that little bit crankier when you reach your 30s I think…It’s sad but I see advertising/promotional campaigns now and find myself going ‘why didn’t they just do this’ a lot, like it’s any of my business. Anyway, for good or bad I feel like sharing my occasional grumps.

It has been a week almost since the Australian Government announced its policy regarding the introduction of a Carbon Tax. It’s massive news here in Australia and the government has a tough job selling it to the voters, there’s a lot of cynics out there (not me!). The government and the Prime Minister is touring the country doing what it/she can do to balance the conversation in the traditional media space, but they are lacking the initiative to counter the arguments in the online space.

Here’s why:

1. Google ‘Carbon Tax’ and you get three Adwords advertisements - None of them from the Government
2. There is a Climate Change Action website set up to promote the policy but this is linked to the Labor Party’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. A great opportunity is being missed here to setup separate profiles to encourage more conversation and greater uptake. Neither Labor Facebook or Twitter account has surpassed 10,000 people yet from a country of 22 million.
3. I have not once seen a Facebook advertisement explaining the policy

SUBSCRIBE, SUBSCRIBE, SUBSCRIBE

So i’m going to include one blog, website or service that you should check out and maybe even subscribe. This week it is:

MarketingProfs - Get to the Point Newsletters. Really useful bite-sized newsletters dropped into your inbox every day but of course you can choose which topics you want to follow and this will dictate whether the emails are every day. Choose any or all of the following - Small Business, Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, B2B Marketing and Social Media.

HANDY LINKS/TOOLS

I spend some serious time on Twitter and there are so many new and useful tools shared each and every day it’s not funny. So each week, i’m going to put forward one that I think is definitely worth checking out if you’re a small business.

PageModo - A site to help you design professional Facebook pages from a host of templates. For a small business operator without iFrames knowledge, this is seriously easy to use. The service comes with a free package offering just one page, wit three other premium packages going up to $33.25 per month for 15 pages.

A POST WORTH READING

Blogging is great, for everyone who is doing it, for everyone finding the information they were after and hopefully for those of you actually reading mine. Respect. But with that much content out there it’s hard to sift through what is going to be useful or not, particularly if you’re a small business operator with little time to be pandering about on social media all day like us marketers. So i’m going to post my three favourite posts each week to make the job just a little easier for you.

1. ’5 ways to encourage your customers to share your content’ - via Mashable
2. ‘How Social Media usage affects shopping habits’ - via eMarketer
3. ‘What are the key elements in a good Facebook landing page?’ - via SmartCompany

DID YOU KNOW

..That mobile advertisements are outperforming standard online banner advertisements..full story.

Have a great weekend and savour it…It doesn’t last nearly long enough

P.S. Here’s a good reciprocal link http://www.anchor.com.au/

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Posted on 01, January 2011