The 3 things that I can’t get enough of:  bagpipes, the Irish countryside (or is it Scottish?, well whatever they’re both the same anyway), and Johnnie Walker.

It can take years to build a brand, but minutes to destroy it. Brand spokespeople can be a brand’s own worst enemy by inadvertently inflicting wounds that could lead to the brand’s untimely demise. Luckily, the American public is quite forgiving. You just have to go about it the right way. This requires some public relations expertise that, unfortunately, Tiger Woods doesn’t seem to have.

The first lesson is to shift the public’s anger and resentment (or even hate in some cases) to the actual misconduct itself and away from the person/business that did the misconduct. This is because public sentiment depends on how you respond to rumors of misconduct rather than on the misconduct itself.

The second lesson in public relations is to plan for crisis management. If you have both an operational and a communications response, you will hopefully maintain confidence in your brand among key stakeholders such as customers, employees, investors, and suppliers.

The third lesson in public relations is to start early. Tiger waited way too long to comment on the media rumors about his indiscretions and the rumors blew way out of proportion. No comment or too little comment from you gives others permission to comment on your behalf, leaving more room for rumor and speculation. Commenting early will put you in control of the story.

And the final lesson in public relations that is to be learned from Tiger Woods’ is to make sure there are no information leaks. You need to make sure your public relations teams or departments aren’t speaking with any outsiders or media. Word travels fast, so confidentiality is key.

Public relations is a tough job because you need to keep in mind how people react to certain things. You need to understand human behavior at a sociological and psychological level. These few lessons will help you stay ahead of your game, but it’s probably in your best interest to hire a public relations agency. A public relations agency will not only have the know-how, but also the connections to properly perform some crisis management. And while they’re doing that, you can continue to focus on your business.

Companies have been told that using social media as a means of public relations is beneficial in the long run, but ROI might take a little while since networking on social media sites like Facebook or MySpace is all about establishing relationships.

Online marketing consultants observe that many internet marketing professionals are hesitant about investing portions of their budget towards social media because returns are slow and not immediate.

However, if done well, social networking builds long-term relationships with online consumers.

Those looking for long-term, sustainable customer relationships can spend less per month using social media.

While 64% of surveyed businesses state they have tried social media out, 31% are not spending in this area at all.

Google does it again with Google:  Favorite Places.  It’s online marketing and mobile marketing combined into one.  Now customers can access your business reviews simply by taking a picture of a coded box on their cellphones. Ultimate synergy!  Check it out:

While maintaining email advertising lists and creating a strategy during a down economy, don’t overlook co-registration.

Co-registration is an arrangements between companies to collect user information for purposes of email advertising. Usually this would be a separate check-box on a Web signup form where the user can opt-in to receive messages from a third-party.

Such potential partners are hard to come by because it’s expensive and time consuming to set up partnerships on an individual basis. Because of this, most organizations work through a third party that makes the arrangements, processes the leads, and sells them.

Whenever money is involved, there will always be unscrupulous people involved. Marketers looking for a quick way to grow their email advertising list combined with suppliers looking to sell as many addresses as possible usually leads to significant problems that people must be aware of. These are the problems that people must defend against if they are going to enter co-registration for their email advertising campaign.

Before contracting with a co-registration provider, find out:

• Is this really co-registration or is it just a list purchase or rental? Some vendors have a hard time separating the two concepts. Co-registration is where individuals opted-in to your list on someone else’s site. A vendor can’t have thousands of addresses for you immediately; if they do, you know that something is wrong.
• How does the sign-up process work? You should try it out with a fake address and see what happens. Can you choose lists individually? Does the vendor honor those choices or do they sell your address elsewhere as well?
• How signups validated? Do they use double opt-in or will they be selling you potentially invalid addresses?
• What other data comes with the addresses?
• Will you receive any other demographic information? Will the data include where and when the subscriber opted in?
• Who else will receive the same addresses? The point of co-registration is that the subscriber signs up for multiple lists. Will you have any control over, or visibility of, which other organizations are receiving the same address?
• What happens in the event of complaints and non-deliveries? Will you be compensated for recipients who complain? What about for non-deliveries?

Even if all these things look good, take some more defensive measures.

Try Before You Buy

You must verify that you’re getting what you expect. In the most egregious cases, vendors have been known to forge email advertising co-registration addresses. Ensure that the economics don’t give incentives to the unscrupulous. To that end, you should pay for addresses only after you’ve sent to them.

Monitor Your Sources

If a particular vendor or site goes rogue, or even if the site is scammed and starts providing poor quality data, you must be able to identify it quickly and immediately segregate those addresses to prevent damage to your reputation.

Follow the Money

Track ROI for your email advertising co-registration addresses and sources. Keep the ones that work; drop the ones that don’t. List size is far less important than the ROI you get from it.

Despite claims to the contrary, email advertising co-registration isn’t a quick fix or shortcut for list growth. It requires significant planning and maintenance to keep the program running well. However, if your partners and vendors are well chosen and monitored, it can be a solid way to grow your list beyond what you can achieve through more traditional means.

As 2009 ends and businesses begin setting strategies for 2010, it’s time to review your email advertising campaign, and what you want to focus on for the upcoming year. The question is what should you focus on for email advertising in 2010?

It doesn’t matter what type of email advertising rep you are, whether your a novice or expert, B2B or B2C, 2010 is introducing a revolution. An entirely new way of reading and navigating information will the change the Internet as we know it. Web 3.0 is finally here and Apps are the new Internet.

As consumers are becoming more digitally driven, they’re buying more enabling devices, i.e. ones that are connected to the Internet 24/7. Most of us already have these devices: iPhones, Android phones, netbooks, TVs, gaming systems, electronic readers, and more.

This means that email advertising will need to evolve in order to be more conducive towards a mobile accessible phenomenon that is drastically changing the way in which we read and interact with our messages.

For example, people that are connected 24/7 on mobile devices can see email advertising right now, and for those already in a store, they can purchase faster than they can shop online. Why? Because they’re standing in the store when the email advertising arrives.

For B2B, this means that email advertising received at a trade show can also be tweeted to drive traffic to a booth, or a conversation happening in a large hall.

This also means that emails will face an important challenge to remain actionable for a later date. When you read most of your emails on your PC or laptop, the messages are staring at you, reminding you to read them, file them, or delete them. But when you read your emails in a mobile setting, you remove the bold black “new message” label and hours later when you look in your inbox, you run the risk of losing the message to the sea of other messages received while you were gone.

So when you sit down to consider your plans for 2010, remember this:

• Getting a solid commitment to opt-in messaging is key. The decade of digital devices starts in 2010, and you’ll need as much commitment as you can get.
• Be ready to test messages that resonate when people are mobile. Mobile doesn’t mean a phone necessarily, it also means walking around. Think out of the box; imagine someone becoming a brand facilitator for you with the push of a button.
• Don’t claim victory over any type of messaging strategy. I’ll put money on the fact that in the fourth quarter we’ll be messaging differently than we do now.

The next year and a half will bring significant changes to our lives as email advertising gets better.

This is a map of the U.S. with eBay’s sales numbers from Black Friday.

Your full service ad agency might explain to you a handful of social media tactics that they will claim you should use employ as a strategy. However, its usually more of a bunch of tactics that they want to be paid for rather than a strategy.

But it should always come back to answering why you should be doing this.

Social media strategies involve much more than just putting the accounts together. The members of social media communities want valuable and quality content. If you have that, you will be a trusted source of information for your service/product.

So what exactly does a social media strategy involve? Here are some simple questions you should consider before wildly deploying social media marketing tactics.

• Answer the Question of “Why?”: Your social media strategy should fully tell you why you’re using a particular tactic. Is it because your audience is there and interacting already? Is it because the potential for branding and exposure is there?
• How to Deploy a Strategy: How do you gain respect in social media? Do you go in guns blazing, or do you sit back and get a feel for what you’re about to embark on? Is it an approach of asking questions first and then offering advice? Do you want to ask for submissions from the audience or start by writing valuable content? Your strategy should fully answer these questions before you start.
• Defining Your Goals and Measuring Analytics: How do you know your efforts are doing anything? What is your company expecting as a return on your time and resources spent on your marketing efforts in social media? If there isn’t a clear set of goals to be measured for your efforts, how can you justify your tactics? Do you have clear ROI for your social media efforts?
• When to Should You Re-evaluate?: Some New Jersey marketing companies sometimes forget to define when they should re-evaluate their efforts. But what if something isn’t working, and you aren’t meeting your goals? What if something else is working really well? Set points in your strategy for re-evaluation. Remember, nothing is ever set in stone when it comes to social media marketing.

It’s very common to create a MySpace account or Facebook fan page because it’s free, easy, and everyone else is doing it. While New Jersey marketing companies should secure accounts on social media sites for their clients or brand names, they shouldn’t just devote massive amounts of time to one particular social media marketing tactic just because of the above three reasons.

Implementing social media marketing tactics for any reason without a good strategy in place will ultimately lead to confusion and disappointment in your efforts in the social media game.

If any full service ad agency, public relations agency, or search marketing firm comes to you and says that you need a Facebook fan page without any reason other than that it’s new, you need it, and they know how to do it for you, then you might want to stop and ask yourself why you’re using that advertising agency.