Purdue University's movers and shakers were celebrated in fine style during last season's homecoming events. The "Makers, All" campaign recognized visionary students, faculty and alumni who made a mark on the world. From peacemakers and history makers to filmmakers, poets and spacecraft manufacturers, the Boilermakers have established a legendary tradition of employing creative ingenuity, drive and determination to make a positive impact on the world.

Conceived with the input of more than 5,000 students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, prospective students, corporate partners and other stakeholders, the campaign employed a multimedia, multidisciplinary approach to engage the university community in spreading the word about its success, values and reputation.

"Boilermakers have a long-standing tradition of serving as catalysts for transformation around the world, from noteworthy alumni who have left a perpetual mark on the cosmos to dedicated researchers who toil in relative anonymity to solve some of the world's most vexing challenges," says Teri Lucie Thompson, Purdue's chief marketing officer and vice president of marketing and media.

During the 2010 homecoming football game, Purdue orchestrated a text-to-win giveaway that asked attendees to identify what kind of "maker" they were. More than 3,000 texts later, they exhausted their supply of T-shirts, produced by University Spirit.

Purdue also created customizable stickers, produced by Printing Services, to give wearers the opportunity to share what kind of "maker" they are by filling in a blank. About 6,000 stickers were distributed at Homecoming. The remaining 4,000 that were printed are continuing to be distributed at the Visitor Information Center.

Finally, a promotional products distributor worked with Purdue to create more than 5,000 "Maker" buttons in five different designations. These were distributed at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C.

The campaign also had a technology component. Purdue engaged their audience in conversation through the "Makers" site and interactive forums. They invited the Boilermaker community to share their own story about the kind of impact they make on the world. The site also supported video uploads, photos and text.

The marketing campaign was designed to uniquely capture the essence of the Boilermaker persona: energetic, optimistic, enthusiastic, creative, curious, capable and reliable. "There is an old saying in real estate: ‘location, location, location,'" Thompson says. "In branding, particularly in brand engagement, I emphasize ‘relevance, relevance, relevance!' This is particularly critical in the increasingly competitive and cluttered higher education category. You have to make sure your brand is relevant to the consumer – in this case, young adults – because if it is not, nothing else matters."

Step 1
Plan at least four months out. Most golf courses are ready to help you with the planning task, as they likely have a few dozen group events come through each season, and so have a system for handling groups. But you should contact the pro shop at your desired course at least 120 days out; not only do you have to ensure that the course is free on the day you want it, you and your staff will need that much time to create your itinerary, coordinate the details and market the event. The golf shop will usually assist any group that has 16 or more players, and can accommodate as many as 144 players on a course for a single event. But groups generally need to have at least 60 players – and sometimes 80 – to secure what's called a 'shotgun' start on the course.

Step 2
Budget carefully. "Tournaments can run way over budget due to unanticipated costs," says Daiva Rugienius, events coordinator for Corporate Golf Tournaments. Besides obvious costs like course rentals, banquets and trophies, Rugienius advises searching out hidden expenses such as club extras and cart fees and minimums, gratuities and taxes. "When you've catalogued every possible expense, divide by the minimum number of participants to get your per-person cost," she says.

Step 3
Create a tournament Website. To drum up players, you might have to market aggressively. One tool that helps boost attendance at low cost is the Internet. "I'm seeing many organizations create individual Web pages for their golf events," says Walt Galanty, founder of AIM Meetings & Events. "A golf-events site can be used for registration and for keeping up interest of attendees and letting them know who else is playing," Galanty adds. "On the site, you can also post names of the winners and the prizes they won and allow attendees to order photos directly from the photographer. Not only that, but it can allow hotlinks to your events sponsors' Websites."
An additional tip: "Build excitement with photos from previous events," advises Rugienius.

Step 4
Choose foursomes wisely. Once the attendee list is set, there are several things to consider when grouping players into foursomes. The first, of course, is business interest. People come to business-golf events to meet others with reciprocal business interest, so allowing attendees to choose on their registrations forms who are in their group, or which type of buyer or supplier they'd like to be paired with, is wise. The other consideration is handicaps. By having players list their handicap on their registration, the golf shop can determine who should play with whom so that the pace of play does not get too slow. Also, handicaps help the golf pro determine which playing format would be best.

Step 5
Create a game-day timeline. "Start registration at least an hour ahead of tee-off," says Rugienius, "and make sure your support staff arrives on time." Equipment, gifts and trophies should be delivered well ahead of time, unpacked, sorted and available for distribution where and when they are to be distributed.

Step 6
Don't forget awards and giveaways. You'll want to give attendees logoed items that they'll use over and over again to help them remember the great time they had. (See "Tournament Shopping List" below.) And, you'll want high-quality photos. Rugienius advises hiring someone to photograph all of the course events and post the photos on clamshell display boards immediately following the tournament. When the tournament concludes, hand out awards at a cocktail party or dinner, and have a videographer on hand to create a customized DVD for all attendees.

Tournament Shopping List 
Here are some popular logoed giveaways for golf events:

Polos – These are a staple at any upscale tournament. Look for a relaxed fit, moisture wicking mesh, knit collar and UPF sun protection. Place a tonal logo on the sleeve for an understated look.
 
Golf balls – Shorten play time by choosing urethane-covered balls engineered for maximum distance off of a wide range of swing types.

Shoe bags – Choose models with heavy-duty construction with a handy top handle, mesh screens for ventilation and a plush lining to avoid scrapes and scuffs.

Hats – Opt for a logoed bill cap featuring structured, well-fitted construction, a dark underbill to reduce glare and vibrant stitching and piping.

Jackets – Choose full or quarter zip, depending on the look and style.

Golf bags – Consider inexpensive gear bags as starter gifts and hole prizes, but go all out with beautifully-textured leather club bags for top winners and raffle prizes.  

Gloves – Choose a pair with superior suppleness, enhanced moisture and heat dissipation and good, flexible mesh airflow.

Golf packs – Prepare your duffers for the elements by choosing kits that include sunblock, lip balm, moist towelettes and insect repellent.

Divots – Look for divots with curved, course-friendly designs that repair grass without pulling it out by the roots.

Towels – Features to look for include: 100% double-sheared cotton, expert hemming and grommet hooks.

Trophies – A variety of options are available, from mounted crystal balls, golf pyramids, presentation boxes, descriptive plaques and distinctive vases. Work with your promotional products distributor to find the perfect item.

A marketing strategy is developed with many facets in mind. Running an ad in a local paper is maybe good advertising but it cannot be considered a marketing strategy. A marketing strategy may include advertising in a local paper as one of the facets but much more needs to be developed and strategized in order for a campaign to be effective.

Promotional goods like pens, mugs, caps and USB sticks can add passion to any marketing campaign and push you ahead of your competition. It may simply be that one extra step that makes the difference between being remembered and being forgotten.

Although great ideas are born every day, here are some marketing arenas where promotional goods can effectively raise awareness of your campaign:

1. Get involved in or sponsor community or fundraising events in your area. It’s an excellent way to promote local goodwill and helps to enhance your business reputation, attracting attention from prospective customers and referrers. But make sure that your businesses involvement is remembered by offering to fellow participants. A pen or T-shirt can go a long way to remind future customers of your community commitment.

2. Hold a launch party for your new or product. Invite existing and prospective clients, business partners and the local media. Hand them a loot bag filled with carefully selected promotional gifts. Include things to pamper and things to use every day. Chocolates, sweets and wine are a memorable treat, and a useful memory stick or calendar will have a lasting promotional effect on your brand.

3. Be opportunistic, hand out promotional winter gloves during a snowstorm! What a great way to get people to remember your helpfulness – and brand name.

Promotional goods can be used to move your marketing campaign into a completely different level. Add them into the marketing mix and see how they help in your visibility and brand recognition.

With the holiday season starting up, we figured we would make your last minute shopping a little less painful.

Chimera13 is offering to one lucky winner an Apple™  Ipod Shuffle in their choice of colour (depending on availability).

You can load it up with all kinds of music to get in the holiday spirit or simply to drown out the in-laws :)

This contest is open to US and Canadians only.

 Each of the below criteria will get you an extra entry. To enter, please comment in the comments section below this Note.

 1. Publicly follow our new blog using Google Friend Connect or Networked Blogs . 

2. "Like" The Chimera13 blog.

2. Subscribe to either our RSS or email feed.

3. "Like" Chimera13 on Facebook.

4. Follow Chimera13 on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/Chimera13)

5. Tweet this giveaway, being sure to mention @Chimera13  in each Tweet. (No more than six tweets per day, Each tweet is worth one extra entry)

6. Repost this note to your own Facebook page.

7. Invite ten Facebook friends to join our fan page. (for every ten friends invited, give yourself an extra entry. Make sure to keep a list of first names only)

This contest will close at midnight EST on December 10, 2010.

Good luck!

The purpose of this post is really just to give you a peek into how things work over there. China is a beautiful country and is definitely a place I would recommend you visit. Unfortunately, given the size of it, most people will only see the big cities of China and never get to experience the true essence of the country.

These are typical vehicles used to transport raw goods for factories, or to do deliveries. Space is always a concern so if you can do more with less then you're a step ahead!

I've gotten a lot of questions about the food that I eat when I am out there. Presentation is definitely different from that to which I have grown accustomed, but while I do not eat everything that I see, I can attest to the great quality and variety of dishes I have sampled over the years. The majority of North American visitors take issue with the presentation of their meals, rather than with the actual taste! The rural Chinese do not feel a need to disguise the fact that their meat started out as a living, breathing animal. Contrast this with North Americans who manage to convince themselves that  their hamburger started its life in the grocery store!

When you drive through the small towns you'll notice many people make a living as street vendors. Observing their wares is a great way to get to know which fruits and vegetables are now in season. If you've never tasted an in season pineapple then I'm sad to say that you have no idea what you're missing!

When was the last time you saw someone in North America riding a bike in a blazer? This is very typical in rural China. The men are always in blazers even in the ridiculously hot summer months.

I hope you enjoyed this little insiders' view! If you would like to see more of these type photos please ask in the comments.

Promotional products are a great way of ensuring that you can get the attention of your audience and even move beyond it. That is precisely why numerous people are spreading the word of their business together with the help of promotional items.

How would you describe a promotional product? This more often than not is a simple daily object such as a pen, cup or bag. It’s up to you to determine how complex you want your promotional product to be. All you need to do is to ensure that there is room on it for your logo, and bang, you've got yourself a promotional product. These items can be very frugal just as they can be very rich, and the only question you must ask yourself is who are my customers, and which items would they appreciate and use as regularly as possible? These really are an excellent way for spreading the identity of your company and many people enjoy receiving these items and putting them to regular use.

But how specifically do you give them out? These products could be distributed on the pretext of different occasions. You could be organizing an enterprise event, such as a conference. These items may be handed out to potential clients as a generous gift or in many cases these items can be given to your employees to announce a new theme. Alternately, they could be awarded for employee loyalty.

People love to get free things; the most important aspect is to make sure of the following criteria:

1. Make sure the item is useful to the target market.
2. Make sure it conveys well your branding and logo design.
3. Don’t be afraid to be different. Hats and pens are useful but an MP3 player can REALLY get you noticed.
4. Try to keep the look of the items to flow with the rest of your marketing collateral.

Think about what message you would like to convey and how you would like to distribute, and then discuss with your promotional product supplier for some ideas for you.

Just like in real life, people don’t know your business exists unless it lands right in front of their face. If you had a traditional brick and mortar business this would be the moment that you would put that large sign on top of the store saying “GRAND OPENING” or “NEW MANAGEMENT” or “SALE”, depending on your situation, Well, the internet works in a similar way. You need to have a voice on the internet. You need to yell from the digital hilltops that you exist and need to be noticed. There are many ways to attract attention but here are a few that may work for you.

1. Get a Facebook Fanpage - This is a great way to attach you to an environment that is social by nature. By creating this page and inviting your friends and family to be the initial subscribers you give voice to your business. Every time you post something on your fan page and someone clicks the like button or decides to share that entry it spreads to all of their friends. This can be a VERY powerful tool (HINT: Ask your friends and family to hit the like button on the items you post in order to get you started). At the same time this gives you an opportunity to let your current customers as well as your future customers to mingle amongst themselves, discussing issues they have or maybe solutions to problems, either way if you can make this environment comfortable people will appreciate that as well as encourage others to come as well. A great example of a Fanpage done right would be AppleCheeks™. Visit their page and look at how they use the page to discuss issues relevant to their clients, promote new products, and let their fans partake in many of the discussions.
2. Sign up to as many of the social sites as possible, such as Twitter and LinkedIn to name a few. Twitter is a great resource for announcing promotions, specials, events. LinkedIn is great to network amongst different professionals. The more places your business appears the better you will do on the web.
3. Join Forums and discussions when possible: If your product or service is one that helps a group that tend to discuss their issues on the web, don’t be shy to partake in these discussions. You don't necessarily want to push your offering but more importantly to increase your credibility within that market (keep in mind that all forums are searchable on the web, so your discussions are permanent and if your business name is your username this will help you in your search results).
4. Create a Blog: “Who wants to listen to me? I feel like I am talking to myself!” These may be the concerns you have to start with but you may find that what you have to say may be of interest to many people. People enjoy sites that change regularly. It is not as easy to change a site regularly but blog entries are great ways to update content and get a following on your site and you can go at your own rhythm. Whether it be 2 entries a day or one entry every 2 weeks, work with what you are comfortable with. That being said, keep two things in mind - if your entries are few and far between, people will forget about you. Once you have decided on a schedule it is very important to maintain that schedule to give people something to anticipate.

Now the big question - Do I spend money on SEO? I can’t answer the question for you. This is something that you need to decide for yourself, but a few things to keep in mind:

• If you don’t have the time to do all of this work, it makes sense to pay someone (this could be an employee of a firm)
• No SEO company can guarantee top listings on a search engine. If they make such promises turn and walk away.
• The unfortunate problem with search engine results is that they don’t happen instantaneously, so once you have implemented the changes, you will need to be patient to evaluate the results.
• If you choose to spend money, take it slow. Start with a small budget and wait to see results.

Many SEO companies use less then kosher methods to move you up the rankings. The list is very long so always ask about the methods and tools that the company in question is using to help you. If something seems odd, ask someone, be it your web designer or friends, or post a message on a forum or on our blog or Fanpage. Or, if you like, send me a message! I am always available to answer questions.

I hope this series was helpful and if so I encourage you to share this series with the people that you think can benefit from it.

Here we go:

1.            Create a unique and accurate page title: The title tells both the search engine as well as the user what is the actual topic of the particular page. These titles will also appear as the links that people see on the search engine results. You should try as much as possible to give unique names to each of your pages. A side note - if possible, try to put Meta Descriptions on every page of your site. By doing so you help the search engines to rate by relevancy as well as to potentially use this text in the results on the search page.

2.            Try to use simple-to-understand URLs: URLs with words that are relevant to your site’s content and structure are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be more willing to link to them.  A good example would be www.example.com/whatineed.html  and a bad example would be www.example.com/dir1/example/subdir2/page1.html ; which one do you think you would be more inclined to remember?

3.            Prepare 2 versions of a sitemap for your site: the first version of your site map is a simple page on your site that displays structure of your website, and usually consists of hierarchical listings of the pages on your site. Visitors may visit this page if they are having problems finding pages on your site. The second version being an XML file which you can submit through search engine webmaster tools. This makes it easier for search engines to discover the pages on your site

4.            Interesting content will generate interest on its own: If you create compelling content, people will naturally want to share the information. You could achieve this through blog posts, social media, email, and forums...people recognize good content and love to share it with the people they know.

5.            The key to search terms: Think about the words that a user might choose to search for some aspect of what you do. Some users know a lot about the topic so they may use search words that are different then someone who is new to the topic. If you can anticipate these differences in search behavior and take that in to consideration when you write your content you will have a very large advantage over the way the search engines will find you.

6              Make sure your text is easy to read: Writing careless text with many spelling mistakes or grammatical errors will have negative effects on search results. Also try to keep your content new and fresh. Reusing old content will not give you positive results. All it will do is make sure that the content is there primarily for your users, but will not give you an advantage in terms of listings with search engines.

7.            Are your images well identified? Make sure to use brief but descriptive filenames and alt text for all of your images. You can create an image sitemap if you like as well if you want to go that extra mile.

8.            Use heading tags appropriately: Use heading tags to emphasize important text. Don’t overdo it, and use them wherever they make sense. Too many heading tags make it difficult for the users to scan the content and determine where one topic ends and another begins.

9.            Reciprocal links: Try as much as possible to develop reciprocal links between your site and others, as this has a huge impact on the relevancy of your website on the web. That being said, you don’t want it everywhere for no relevant reason.

This is by no means the complete list for SEO, but this most definitely can get you started and will improve the flow of your site as much for your clients as for the search engines themselves.

I hope this was helpful and I will begin work on the third part of this series that covers the work that you need to put in to make your business as visible as possible.

And finally there are the important questions “Should I spend?” and “How Much?”

Until next time!

Many of my clients ask me for advice on whether or not they need to pay professional SEO companies to increase their visibility. This is always a very interesting question.

First of all, what is SEO? Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving a website's ranking in search engine results. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? In fact, it isn’t simple at all. Search engine sites such as Google and Bing constantly correct algorithms to try and improve the results that come up when you do a search for the things that you are looking for. The question is, how do they know what is relevant and what is not? The people behind these sites ask themselves this question all the time. And by combing through your site for key information and by scanning for content and other factors, they try to determine the level of importance they need to attribute to your site.

Confused? Don’t be embarrassed. Most people look at me with glazed eyes when I discuss SEO. The trick is to break it down into some fundamentals and then see what you can and cannot accomplish on your own.

There are a few factors you need to be aware of when asking yourself if SEO is necessary for your site:

1. Often an individual will run a search for their business name and once they see it pop up they assume all is well. Obviously if everyone used Google to search only for the name of a company there would be no need for advertising. The problem lies in the fact that most people who are searching for you don't know that it's actually you that they are looking for!

2. It's important to determine HOW people are looking for you. For instance, if you offer a specific product or service then chances are that people are not typing a general search term into the search engines in order to try and find you and your competitors. As an example, if I own a tanning salon in New York City specializing in the XYZ method of tanning and someone is looking for the specific service I offer, it's unlikely they are going to simply type “tanning” into the search engine. They are more likely to type in “tanning XYZ NYC” and I am more likely to pop up in the results because this is the nature of the business I run and have detailed on my website. Essentially, the more specific the information you offer up to the robots, the more likely you are to pop up in searches with industry-specific parameters.

3. A mistake many companies make is to assume that all they need to do is plug some data into some places and sign up for a couple of search engines and BANG...they'll show up in first place on the list of search results. Unfortunately this really isn’t the way things work. There are some very basic steps you can take to make your site as SEO-friendly as possible, and I'll address these steps in the second part of this report.  Then there is the work that you need to put in to make your business as visible as possible, and I'll tell you what they are in the third part of this report. And finally there are the important questions “Should I spend?” and “How Much?”, which will be addressed in the third part of this report.

The old approach would have been to throw money at the situation. Some companies still take that tack. If you take the time to evaluate the industry leaders you'll notice the secret to their success lies not in the numbers but rather in how they allocated them.

In the modern world, the consumer has an increasing amount of input regarding what is acceptable and what will not be tolerated. With the introduction of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube , the individual now has more clout than ever before. This can be advantageous in terms of effecting change and while some companies have yet to accept social media as the new advertising standard the fact is that the concept is around to stay. So why not make it work to your advantage?

I too am guilty of trying to resist some change. The fact is that any business that wants to grow needs to stay in motion. This is true not only for web based businesses but for the brick and mortar type as well.

When I started in the Web design business many years ago, one of the things that we would tell clients is that the web is great for your image; your business can seem just as big as any multinational on the web. Today the multinational is desperately trying to look like the small mom and pop type establishment.

Ironic, isn’t it?