Four New Websites from The Placemaking Group

November 22nd, 2011

Here are four of our newest websites designed and developed by our team here at Placemaking Group. We built these for our clients with one important rule. This rule is a key to making a successful website. The rule is to understand who you need to talk to and being able to communicate the story that you want your target audiences to know about. It’s not good enough to just have functionality in a website. It has to talk to the people that you are trying to influence. So, click on any of the website images, and read the stories that reflect our clients’ brands. You’ll see how we’ve incorporated website content and functionality to match the unique needs of each client’s customers.


Interior Designer Website
Real Estate Development Website

Mortgage Company Website
Real Estate Community Website
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Social Media is Perfect for Event Marketing

November 6th, 2011

Social media is perfect for event marketing because, if done well, it can convey a real sense of the event. And that creates a sense of excitement and increases attendance. Done well is the key.

Hard work is more important than a large budget. The most successful promotions look easy. That’s because behind them is a lot of thought, preparation, planning, hard work, attention to details and more hard work.  Here are some tips to make it work.

Photo of the Astounding Electric Magic Elixir Medicine Show captures a glimpse of the silliness and fun of the Gold Rush Days event in Old Sacramento.

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Posted in Event Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Video | 4 Comments »

With Social Media, Focus on your Story.

October 30th, 2011

When you’re thinking about how you use Social Media, doesn’t it seem like a huge question as to what to talk about?

This is one of the concerns often reported to us. People aren’t sure what they should be posting, blogging and tweeting.

At Placemaking Group our advice is to stick to your message! Your brand message is the key to your social media. Your job as a marketing professional is to keep the brand message clear and consistent. In the many social media avenues (LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, etc.)  it’s easy to get distracted. And, of course, when a question comes up, you have to field it. But, when you are posting and blogging make sure you are telling your company’s story.

Mike Ogden, Digital/Senior Writer, Marketing Communications Specialist at PlattForm Advertising, keeps it to 3 points… Read the rest of this entry »

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Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform How You Lead

October 17th, 2011

Can open leadership, using social media as a prime tool, help you to get your team and clients together with your plans for the future of your company?

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of giving the lunch keynote talk at The Institute for Social, Search & Mobile Marketing (ISSMM) Executive Roundtable. And a big part of the pleasure was getting to listen to Charlene Li lecture and facilitate the meeting. Charlene is one of the true experts in how to effectively use social media. Her original book, Groundswell, is a best-selling primer on the subject. Open LeadershipNow her new book, Open Leadership, is a great place for CEOs to learn how to use social media to be more effective leaders.

She begins by letting you decide if you’re willing to run your company using open leadership. If you’re not, then social media won’t help you. But if you are, then you’ve come to the right place. She gives some great examples of open leaders, including Captain Michael Manazir, who helms the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. She shows how an effective leader must be open, even when running an aircraft carrier! She describes the benefits of openness with numbers, including an ROI. Read the rest of this entry »

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Make Your Downtown Famous with a Seven Step Marketing Plan.

October 9th, 2011

How do you make your Downtown Famous? How do you get visitors to shop and eat at the restaurants? How do you get businesses to move in?

California Downtown Assoc.

Miriam Schaffer and I are going to be giving a talk about those issues this week at the California Downtown Conference in Riverside, CA. If you haven’t registered for the conference yet, there is still one day, so do it!

We at the Placemaking Group have had the privilege of helping to make many downtowns famous. When we start the process, one of the first things we do is to get the group who hired us to understand that there are specific things that make your downtown different from the downtowns of neighboring cities. Sometimes if you’re too familiar with your own downtown, you don’t even realize the differentiators. That’s where we come in. We’ll talk to the people walking in your downtown. We talk to the businesses that are there. We’ll listen to what is said and what isn’t said. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Advertising, Issues Management, Marketing, Publicity, SEO, Social Media | 1 Comment »

CONVERGE 2011

September 6th, 2011

Many people told me that they wished they had gone to the last ISSMM event a few months ago at the Wente winery. Well here’s their next event. It should be a really instructive conference called CONVERGE 2011.

And the exciting news is, you can get an additional 10% discount if you put in PMG (that’s for Placemaking Group!) in the discount code box! I’ll be facilitating a panel at the event, but look below at everyone else who will be there. Quite star-studded! See Registration for Agenda, Speaker Profiles, and discounted hotel rates. Read the rest of this entry »

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BamMagazine.com Launches September 15, 2011

September 5th, 2011

Just like BAM Magazine but without the paper.  That’s the new paradigm. If you want to keep up with breaking news, you can’t wait for it to be written, printed and then distributed.

Jerry Seltzer, in his blog post “Extra, Extra, read all about it” writes about how he used to subscribe and read three newspapers. Now he get’s his news online. So, we’re doing the same thing with BamMagazine.com.

Here’s what Jim Harrington reported today… BAM magazine will return as website – San Jose Mercury News www.mercurynews.com

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Posted in Advertising, Journalists, Marketing, Web sites | 4 Comments »

How to Write an Effective Press Release.

September 1st, 2011

I was on Kerry Heaps’ radio show this morning. We talked about the concept of an effective Press Release.

A press release used to have one specific job to do. It was the way to get the attention of a journalist and get them to write the story you are trying to interest them in. A press release written correctly and thought through as far as how you’re influencing the journalist, is one of the best ways of getting a story placed. But the chance of any particular press release accomplishing that has always been small.

Now a press release has a couple of purposes. Read the rest of this entry »

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Looks Matter in Marketing.

August 24th, 2011

Science Daily reports that Annual Reports that look good actually make an experienced investor think that a company has more value.  In marketing we always figure that’s obvious, but it’s great that scientists have studied it and it’s true!

Here’s what they report…
In the study involving experienced investors, in which participants were asked to rank companies based on how likely they would be to invest in those firms, the findings suggested that including an additional color throughout a firm’s annual report would have the same impact on an investor’s firm ranking as a 20 percent improvement in revenue from the previous year
“The implications of these findings should point firms in the direction of good graphic designers,” added Townsend. “After all, it is a lot easier to add color to a printed piece of paper than to add revenue to a company’s bottom line.”

If you’d like to read the whole article click here!

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Why Use YouTube for Search Engine Optimization

July 18th, 2011


Why Use YouTube for Business-to-Business? Here are a couple of reasons. The most important is, if you use it correctly, it’s great for getting your website higher up in the search sites. The second one, and it’s almost as important, is many people would rather watch a short video about your company than read a lot of text about it!

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