Danny Brown

Danny Brown

Bonsai Interactive Marketing
Danny Brown is partner at Bonsai Interactive Marketing, a full service agency offering integrated, social media and mobile marketing solutions. He is also founder of the 12for12k Challenge, a social media-led charity initiative connecting globally and helping locally.
  • Why Research is Key and How to Create a Research Station For Your Social Media Strategy
    0 comments 282 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-21

    Danny Brown research stations

    Back in the day, if you wanted to know how successful your marketing had been you had to use expensive and time-consuming analysis.

    You might have spent time putting together a direct mail package that had a call-to-action to return a slip with a customer’s details on it, and the amount returned to you would show how successful that campaign had been.

    Of course, the problem is, if you sent out 10,000 flyers, you don’t know how many actually arrived at a home; how many were read versus how many were put in the bin; and how many never made it out the post office.

    The only gauge of success were the returned slips, and when you’re spending money and...

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  • The Clear and Continuing Need for Blogger Outreach Specialists at PR Agencies
    0 comments 214 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-20



    Last week, I received an email pitch from a PR agency looking to feature their client on my blog. The pitch was friendly enough, but had one glaring error. Here’s the pitch:

    Hi Danny,

    Thanks to social giant Klout, Badgeville gamification customers can now associate a numeric score with social interactions.

    Bottom line: companies will find it a whole lot easier to influence the behaviors of their customers.

    Badgeville will leverage Klout’s influence-ranking technology to help enterprise leaders increase online engagement. The partnership will allow businesses to pinpoint which customer/employee carries the most influence and provide key analytics to score social...

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  • Creating a Corporate Blog People Want to Read
    0 comments 285 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-15

    Corporate blogging

    While many of the tips on blog resource sites concentrate on “personal blogging”, many can be transferred to a more business-minded blog.

    Yet what about corporate blogs, where many of the tips given might not apply, or come up against everyone’s favourite, the Red Tape Roadblock?

    Can generic tips apply to more organizational blogs?

    Yes and no – depending on the company in question, and their willingness to experiment. Here are some ideas for those that might be willing to look at how their organization could use a blog.

    Work Around the Legal Blocks

    One of the biggest...

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  • How to Get More Blog Readers By Having Your Content Syndicated
    0 comments 300 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-11


    For most (if not all) bloggers, one of the key metrics on how their blog has grown comes from how many readers it has.

    These don’t necessarily have to be subscribers, either, although I’m a fan of subscribers being more a metric than readers for success, since these are folks that are investing their inboxes with you. But I digress…

    But as any blogger knows, wanting more readers and getting more readers can be two wildly separate entities. It’s a big blogging world out there, and people can be sparing with their time and where to invest it.

    The good news is, there is a way you can attract more readers to your blog, and that’s through content syndication. The bad news, you may have to give up some control. So what are the benefits and how do you get syndicated?

    A...

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  • Collaborative Marketing and the Natural Progression to Real Customer Satisfaction
    0 comments 474 reads
    Posted on 2012-01-27

    Collaborative marketing


    I’ve been thinking a lot about collaborative marketing lately, and how we can turn co-existing businesses more into partners and less about missed opportunities. I think there’s a great untapped market for someone that really wants to grab collaborative marketing and run with it.

    For example – imagine you’re going on a trip. You have to fly to get there, so there are a few processes you need to go through before, during and after:

    • Buying your ticket.
    • Driving to the airport.
    • In-flight activities.
    • Hotel or accommodation when you land.
    • Rental car.

    These are just the basics – I’m sure there are a lot more depending on what your individual needs are.

    Now.

    Instead of...

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  • Before We Believe You
    0 comments 438 reads
    Posted on 2012-01-20

    Behind the mask

    We buy products and services every day.

    Some we need, some we don’t. But we’ve heard good things about them so we buy them.

    Who have we heard good things from?

    Our friends. Our family. Our colleagues.

    People we trust.

    Why do we trust them? Because they’re not a mystery to us.

    They don’t wear masks. They don’t hide behind veils. They don’t try and fool us with trickery.

    They simply are.

    You’re in business. You have a blog. You have a podcast. You want to be popular. You want people to like you; connect with you; follow you.

    You want people to trust you.

    We will. Just don’t wear a mask. Be yourself. Be true. Be honest.

    We know you need to occasionally have...

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  • Heritage, Culture and What the Japanese Can Teach Us About Business Longevity
    0 comments 319 reads
    Posted on 2012-01-12

    If you take a look at a list of the oldest companies in the world, you’ll see the glaringly obvious fact that the majority of the companies listed are Japanese.

    Germany makes a good argument for having a fair few, while the U.S. begins a late charge once they broke away from British rule. The rest is a mish-mash of European countries and developing countries (at least in the later part of the list).

    So why does Japan have such a strong command of business, and what it takes to survive?

    There are a few reasons. As someone who’s heavily influenced by Japanese culture, one of the things I’ve always admired about their business approach is how they encourage innovation and information-sharing from the bottom up. Everyone has a voice – it may not be used, but it will be heard.

    Another reason is the permanent employment system Japanese companies use. This sees workers...

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  • First Impressions Count, But Second Impressions Are What Really Matter
    0 comments 419 reads
    Posted on 2012-01-10

    What do people think of you when they first meet you?

    What do you think their immediate impression is? If it’s personally, you might not care too much – after all, to each their own, right? But what if you’re a business offering a service – does that change your train of thought? Does the view of the same new face now hold more sway?

    Even more so, what if your service is one that defines people’s first impressions of your customer – would you place even more emphasis on every single interaction you have, to make sure the impression left is the right one?

    First Impressions

    I have certain alerts set up via Google (as well as other social monitoring platforms), to alert me to words and phrases that could point to articles or blog posts relevant to me or my business needs. One of these alerts came in recently, so I thought I’d check it out.

    It led me to this Facebook Page (note: image was taken prior to the brand pages makeover, but the...

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  • The Scary Concept of Long Term Vision
    0 comments 225 reads
    Posted on 2012-01-06

    Scary concepts

    For many of us, long term vision can be a scary concept. This is understandable, because it usually means that we’re having to put faith in something we’re doing now not showing a return until much later.

    This could be our businesses; our blogs; or our budding relationship with a new lover.

    It’s scary, because while we believe in our hearts that everything will work out, often we get impatient for results that we can see now.

    We want our business to be profitable right away; we want our blogs to have hundreds of comments, subscribers and social shares; and we want that new love to be the one, and to fall in love with us so we can start living our lives together.

    The problem is, very rarely...

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  • 12 Bloggers You Really Should Read in 2012
    1 comments 922 reads
    Posted on 2012-01-02

    12 bloggers for 2012

    The great thing about blogging is that you get to meet so many smart people. While a post might start the conversation, the comments take it in a whole new direction altogether, and makes a post better for it.

    As well as blog comments offering the opportunity to read the views of these smart people, they also allow us to check out more of their writing, thanks to plugins like CommentLuv.

    I’ve discovered some really great bloggers through comments left on this blog, and I’d like to share 12 of them with you today.

    Each one of them brings a tremendous voice and point-of-view, as well as something to learn from every time. And you can’t ask for more than that.

    So, without further ado and in no particular order, here are 12 bloggers you really should read...

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