By Christo
pher Kourtakis, director of sales and marketing, 360° Industry Solutions — Karin Gelschus recently wrote a post discussing Social Networking Shortcuts. These programs are not only good for making posts, but to monitor what is being said about you, your staff and your facility. Read more >>
By Gary Druckenmiller, Jr., co-founder, TheOpenSea.com – We’ve all been there. You spend hours putting together your marine plan for, well, something. Could be communications, operations, marketing, etc., and you come to realize that all those hours have returned very little. Now that you’re knee deep in execution, you sense something isn’t right. Not that you didn’t try your best, your plan just is not working — either in comparison to what’s out there across the marine landscape or what you expected going in. Read more >>
By Mike Davin, online editor, Boating Industry — On Friday, Apple held a press conference to respond to accusations that its wildly popular iPhone 4 features a defective antenna that drops calls when users hold it the wrong way. Read more >>
Tags: customer service, Internet
By Chuck Lewis, general manager of Boating and RV, ARI Network Services — One of the most common misperceptions among boat dealers is that all that really sells online are books and music downloads — not boats. Read more >>
Tags: Internet
By Gary Druckenmiller, Jr., co-founder, TheOpenSea.com – If there’s one thing that social marketing has accomplished above all else; it’s the ability to provide a discussion platform for those who are not as adept at communicating face-to-face. It allows you (under the shield of digitization and mass communication) to orchestrate your thoughts more clearly, reflect on moments more accurately and craft your social dialogue almost to perfection if necessary. Believe it or not, that’s a hard thing to do for a lot of people in marine (especially those running small businesses) when you’ve got someone standing in front of you or when you’re on the phone … even when you construct e-mails. Social media is certainly not as spontaneous as all of that. Read more >>
Tags: Internet
By Mike Davin, online editor, Boating Industry — As you know, we’re always on the lookout for new ways to interact with our readers through social media and the Internet. Just last week we launched a new poll feature on our Facebook page, and we’re hoping to roll out more new features in the near future. Read more >>
Tags: Internet
By Mike Davin, online editor, Boating Industry — In the old days, if you had a suggestion for your favorite magazine, you could call them up or compose a letter to the editor. Read more >>
Tags: Internet
One of the most popular topics of discussion in the industry this year seems to be Internet technology. Whether it’s SEO, mobile marketing, social networking or e-commerce, marine professionals want to know how to expand and improve their online efforts to drive efficiencies and increase sales in their businesses. Read more >>
By Jeff Scherer, Associate Partner, Callbutton LLC – Many years ago, before the Internet was “cool,” I was the Internet sales manager for one of the largest automotive retailers. This was a very interesting time because prior to this, no auto entities had really stepped out to try to market vehicles through this new budding medium known as “the Web.” To say that many of the old-school general managers in our dealer groups were skeptical would have been a tremendous understatement. They said over and over that this Web thing was a fad, and would never work to sell cars. Our team was often looked at as the “geek squad,” (no offense to the Best Buy’s guys) and as competitors to the retail sales team. Much of this doubt and fear was understandable as we were jumping quickly into territory that was undefined and unknown. Read more >>
By Mike Davin, online editor, Boating Industry — These days, building a Web site is pretty easy. There are free templates more advanced than the sites major companies used a few years back. And if you need something more robust than what’s available for free, there are plenty of individuals and companies out there more than happy to meet your needs. Read more >>
Tags: Internet
