s we approach Thanksgiving and H+A International’s 25th year in business I wanted to take a moment to reflect on all the technology changes that have taken place over the last year that all MarCom professionals should be thankful for. Despite the terrible economy and the many challenges we’ve all endured this year there have been some interesting MarCom advancements that will help all of us be better marketers in 2010 and beyond.

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Here are the five business developments I am most thankful for:

• Social Media - Facebook Linked In Twitter You Tube blogs and a variety of other social networking platforms can help all of us be much more effective marketers.  We are helping our clients connect with their target audiences in ways they never thought possible a couple years ago.  Of course social media has been around for a couple years but it seems 2009 is when many B2B companies started embracing it.

• Flip Cameras - Video is king in social media (just look at the viewing statistics on You Tube) and Flip Cameras and iPhones have opened a realm of new cost-effective opportunities for marketers.  For less than $200 to buy the camera we have produced several videos for our clients featuring testimonials from their clients at trade shows.  We are also doing video blogs (vlogs) and producing some great online marketing tools.
  See Example

• Animated/Video E-mails - Just when we thought e-mails were becoming passé as an effective marketing tool we discovered using animated gifs and video to create excitement and attract attention.  Check out some of the animated e-mails we have produced for our clients and ourselves and see other blog posts below or visit FeedBurner.

• Trade Magazines Increase Digital Presence - Although many of us are sad to see print media decline and the various publications become smaller and/or cease to exist those magazine that are increasing their digital presence provide us with more marketing opportunities.   In addition to using more of our news releases online media allows us link our various sites show videos and partner on social media platforms.

• Better Measurement - Thanks to constantly improving SEO and social media analytics we can now  much more accurately measure who is interested in our clients’ products.  Equally important we can analyze their interests in a variety of different ways and communicate with them in a much more effective manner.

So despite a very tough 11 months for most of us in 2009 we have some great new marketing tools to be thankful for that will position us well when the economy turns around in 2010.