More and more of us are settling into the rhythm of using social media tools at work. For some it’s a steady beat of activities. For others, like me, it’s an every now and then proposition… like going to the gym or cleaning my desk. Regardless of frequency, we do things like making or renewing connections, sharing news, thinking thoughts, promoting initiatives, prattling online, and such.

But, with our encouragement, a few brave and innovative marketers and firms have gone a step further. They’ve used the tools, vocabulary and mores of social media as a way to build brands and address concrete marketing challenges. One example in the professional services world comes from the Southeast’s Dixon Hughes, a top 20 U.S. CPA and advisory firm. Dixon’s career site, which targets on campus recruits, is a mash up of MTV’s The Real World, 21 questions and the old game show, What’s My Line. All enabled by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The short of it is that you get to see, meet and “follow” Dixon interns throughout their days and interact/ask questions of them along the way.

The award-winning approach helps to position Dixon Hughes as positively unique. Better still. It has delivered significant results.

Check it out for yourself: dixon-hughes.com/recruit/

Whether you like the landmark U.S. health care bill or feel otherwise about the legislation (and politics behind it), BBC’s online reporting of the news does a fine job of using information graphics to frame and explain the problem. Follow this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8580192.stm; and have a look at the series of three illustrations at the bottom of the article. The BBC has chosen to deliver substantive information graphically—a lesson for B2B marketers who strive to reach busy executive decisionmakers. Too often, these communication efforts are presented simply as endless narrative—in print, online, in face-to-face PowerPoint and in pitchbooks. A mistake, we believe.

We’ve long advocated a USA Today scanning-reader style—now emulated by all media outlets—where charts, tables and graphs are combined with photos, illustrations and words to deliver key messages. Why? Because we have no more readers, only scanners. Honoring this fact is both respectful and courteous. And when it comes to the web, this approach is also healthier since eyes tire reading buckets of text online. You can learn more about our perspective by listening to our webinar, Designing the Interactive Experience, on YouTube.

We extend congratulations to the following clients for being named “Your Honor Award” national finalists by the Legal Marketing Association:

• Choate Hall & Stewart LLP (Events)
• Gesmer Updegrove LLP (Website)
• Hemenway & Barnes LLP (Identity; Firm-wide, office or practice group brochure)
• Lewis and Roca LLP (Advertising)
• Nixon Peabody LLP (Practice development)
• Steptoe & Johnson PLLC (Announcement)

Last year, nine of our clients were awarded the following distinctions:

• Choate Hall & Stewart LLP (Events, 2nd place)
• Clifford Chance LLP (Recruiting, 2nd place)
• Faegre & Benson LLP (Website, 3rd place)
• McMillan LLP (Identity, 3rd place; Events, 1st place; Advertising, 1st place)
• Nixon Peabody LLP (Market research, 3rd place)
• Practising Law Institute (Identity, 2nd place)
• Poyner Spruill LLP (Firm-wide, office or practice group brochure, Honorable Mention)
• Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox PLLC (Website, 2nd place)
• WeirFoulds LLP (Website, 1st place; Announcement, 1st place)

We look forward to learning this year’s final results at LMA’s annual conference in March. Visit lmaconference.com for more information.

To learn more about our award-winning work, click here.

Now that we are past the holidays and back to work on our 2010 marketing plans, I thought this quick post and link to an article from The New York Times, “The Science of Managing Search Ads,” was timely. One, because it has to do with critical B2C sales during the holiday. And two, because many of us in the B2B space are trying to figure out what in the world to do about the search advertising hullabaloo in the year ahead.

Hold on, some may argue, our C-level prospects don’t look for us online! Fact is, they do, in droves, but that’s another post and a piece of original research we’ll be publishing shortly. In the interim, check out this report discussing how people whose business lives depend on search engine marketing cope with that responsibility. It’s good to learn from those truly in need. Because necessity is…well, you know.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/technology/internet/22search.html?_r=1&ref=business