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Borenstein Group, Top Washington DC Branding Agency, Donates 10,000 Nutritious Meals to Houston Food Banks in Support of Children Affected By Hurricane Harvey  

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WASHINGTON, DC –Borenstein Group, digital branding agency, today announced it has donated 10,000 nutritious meals to children in Houston through The Outreach Program, a national charity that helps combat food insecurity by facilitating delivery of pre-packaged resilient food to communities in need in the U.S and abroad. The meals are expected to arrive during the week of September 10th, 2017 to a local Food Bank.

“At this time of utter devastation in Texas, having sufficient supply of nutritious food for impoverished children who have lost so much, is a small but meaningful step toward combating food insecurity and helping support the people that need it most in Houston and the surrounding affected communities. While recovery may take a long time, this was something we felt we could do immediately,” said Mr. Gal Borenstein, Borenstein Group’s Founder & CEO.

The 10,000 tasty meals are packaged and fortified with protein and include rice and beans, pasta with Italian tomato basil sauce, deluxe macaroni and cheese, minestrone soup, and apple cinnamon oatmeal that meet or exceed the national standards for daily nutrition guidelines for children.

MEAL VARIETIES I The OUTREACH PROGRAM

See the link to Outreach Program’s menu of meals at http://outreachprogram.org/our-meal-varieties  Based in Union, IA, The Outreach Program is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) corporation that organizes food packaging events around the country. With more than 300 million meals packaged to date, the organization’s mission is to provide food, safe water, education, and medical care to those in need at home and abroad. You can learn more about how your corporation can donate at http://outreachprogram.org/

About Borenstein Group:

The Borenstein Group is a Washington DC-based integrated digital branding agency that offers full-services including creative, integrated marketing, digital branding, strategic social media and public relations for B2B and B2G organizations. Voted as 2017 B2B Top Shop by Chief Marketer, it has been named one of the top 15 digital agencies in the United States with an exemplary record of service by Clutch, an independent research, and analysis firm that identifies nationwide top service providers and solutions firms that deliver results for their clients. Its brand tagline is Making Creativity a Science. SM

 

Media Contact: Mr. Gal Borenstein, (703) 385-8178 x28, gal@borensteingroup.com

 

How to Reach Engineers Via Social Media

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If you are a professional B2B or B2G marketer, you already know: social media has been one of the most promoted strategies, with possibly the lowest engagement outcomes. It is tough to justify the use of social media to the C-Suite who wants to see the Return on Investment. So is social media a waste of your marketing time and resources? Not at all.

You just need to exercise strategic judgment to align the right messaging with the right audience demographics that you seek to engage with and the medium where you choose to post your content.

The conventional wisdom is telling us that the lines blur between professional trade media and consumer-oriented social media; it is now harder to distinguish which is the proper medium to reach engineers where they congregate. However, a recent study, released by IEEE, makes it easier for us to prioritize.

Therefore, engineers are most likely to see your postings where they maintain an account. Be mindful that their account might connect to their personal Gmail, Outlook , or Yahoo account and not their corporate email account.

According to the recent study, here are the top choices by the numbers:

  1. LinkedIn is the king when it comes to finding targeted groups of engineers. No matter what age group you are pursuing, from Millennials to Generation Xers, this medium achieved the highest professional reach between 63%-82%. The more senior the decision maker, the more likely that LinkedIn is your right place.
  1. Facebook comes second as a place where engineers tend to congregate and consume content. It demonstrates that engineers are increasingly expanding their traditional-introverted persona to sharing social postings with their friends and family. By using Facebook’s analytics and audience criteria selection, you could now target them by the profession and age group.
  1. YouTube, Google’s video platform, resonates well with engineers as it allows instant access to How-To Manuals, Screen demonstrations, and product reviews where you can visualize what’s being sold. With the dramatic increase of mobile-based access to videos, expect this trend to grow in the coming months.

Surprisingly, what the recent data shows is that the big losers, for now, are Twitter and Instagram, who have not figured out how to attract engineers with meaningful content. The only social media content that works well on these platforms is communicating with journalists and media for public relations and recruitment communications, such as job postings.

engineers use social media

(Source: IEEE Engineering360 Media Solutions’ research report, “Social Media Use in the Industrial Sector,”)

The bottom line: before you go ‘All In’ on social media, consider your audience’s preferences. It is not about YOU; it’s about THEM and where they feel comfortable consuming and processing the information you wish to promote.

 

 

 

 

10 Things People Told Me “Why My Business Will Fail” and How It Made Me Successful

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As my digital branding and marketing firm, the Borenstein Group, celebrates a special anniversary of being 21 years in business, serving the world’s best B2B brands, it almost feel like the parallel to certified adulthood with all the rights and privileges but also the duties and responsibilities.

To most people I meet, it looks like a tremendous accomplishment that any self-funded American entrepreneurial business, can survive 21 years with all the economic turmoil, changing trends and fads, normal and abnormal employee churn, strategic paradigm shifts, personalities and egos, the need to stay relevant and indispensable, technological evolutions and revolutions, not to mention the constant need to ‘feed the beast’ with capitalization and finance. So when people ask ‘how did you get here’? How did your business survive 21 years when most go out of business within the first three years, I defer them to the top 10 things that I was told for which why my business will FAIL.

Truly, no matter how hard was the challenge or situation, the one motivational element that stuck with me, even after all these years, is what negative people told me when I was just starting out, when Borenstein Group started with the impressive startup budget (NOT) of $300 and up to $2,000 in Extended Visa Convenience Checks (that carry a 5% redemptions fee for ‘free’). Yes, this was the budget, and it was my reality.

So, if you have a boss, colleague, partner, advisor, friend or a local community banker (my favorite group of folks that deserve a special place for being non-supportive), here is what I was repeatedly told almost every year in our 21 years in business.

“I’d like to thank you for keep reminding me why you, the negative and uninspiring people who told me ‘it can’t be done,’ ‘it’s not going to work’ and that ‘you are nuts’ for being my great passionate motivation to succeed, even against all odds. It’s funny how it works, but the greater the insult, the more successful I was determined to become. ”

As Spring comes along, you might want to clean your entrepreneurial brain from statements that you were told at one time or another. None of them truly matters if you have a strategic compass and self-confidence in your abilities.

1. You Are Too Young and Inexperienced.
2. Your Financial Ratios Don’t Align with Industry Standards.
3. You Business is Too Small to Compete Against Bigger Firms.
4. You Suck as a Boss. I Quit.
5. You Have an Accent. You’re Not from around here, are you?
6. You Are Too Expensive.
7. You Are Way Too ‘Out There’.
8. You Are Politically Incorrect.
9. You’re not a ‘Culture Fit’ within our corporation.
10. You will never make it with this ‘whatever it takes’ attitude.

For those of you who are facing a dilemma of expanding into an unfamiliar territory, whether it is within an organization, or in starting your own business, or departing to a new partnership, I say, ‘listen to your gut.’ Your gut may not be right 100% of the time, but as long as you keep true to who you are and what your passion is, results will come. The worst thing that can happen is having lived a life of ‘could have’ or ‘should have’.

About the Author: Mr. Gal Borenstein is the Chief Strategy Officer and CEO of Borenstein Group, a top digital marketing communications firm in the Washington DC metropolitan area that serves clients locally and globally. He is a recognized expert and strategist in digital branding, marketing, social media, advertising, online reputation management and public relations matters. He is the author of the business leadership book, ACTIVATE! How to Power Up Your Brand to Dominate Your Market, Crush Your Competition & Win in the Digital Age, available in premiere bookstores and on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles and Apple’s iBooks. He can be reached at 703-385-8178 x28 orgal@borensteingroup.com.

Top 10 Digital Branding, PR & Marketing Trends For 2016

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What are the top marketing trends to watch for in 2016 that will impact your company? Borenstein Group’s insights for corporate marketers.

  1. Facebook Video is Now King

YouTube’s video app has had the second most unique visitors year over year with only Facebook ranking higher. With YouTube acting as the undisputed king of online video and Facebook beefing up its own video platform, 2016 is poised for brands ready to commit to  this mobile video marketing trend.

  1. 5 Seconds is all You’ve Got!

Analytics Research shows that when it comes to mobile video advertising, if you don’t catch the attention of the viewer in the first 5 seconds, you can forget about it as engagement drops dramatically. Whether it’s humor, drama, or shock value – the premium for higher results is what happens in the first five seconds.

  1. Marketing Automation Matures

As marketing automation platforms mature and collect big data, marketers will struggle to make data into actionable information to make intelligent decisions. The platforms are not the solution, they are the tool to make better decisions for both demand generation and customer experience.

  1. Shared Economy Drives Greater Opportunities

The notion that even affluent customers are looking to make extra bucks is revolutionizing the concept of social sharing in the information space. Additionally, physical transactions such as transportation, hotel rentals, driving your own car and sharing resources like knowledge communities are rampant in digital-first startups and grown-ups like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and Tinder.

  1. Privacy is the New Piracy

After experiencing cyber security attacks and stolen data in virtually every organization, from banks to the white house to the military, data piracy will become a major concern for non-Millennials, who inherently trust mobile-first, as new collaborative platforms such as e-healthcare records, accounting online service providers, and other Software-as-Service companies will be trusted with your utmost secrets. Who you can trust will become a branding issue, not a cyber security issue.

  1. B2B Digital will Become Consumerized

From both a design and content perspective, Customer Experience (CX) and User Interface (UI) on your desktop, tablet or smart phone, have been initially-owned by impulse-based B2C advertising to consumer brands. In 2016, as B2B corporate buyers now use the same devices (BYOD) for work, they expect their B2B suppliers, vendors, and partners to match their consumer experience and demands for speed, responsiveness, and ease of use even with the most complex B2B enterprise software systems. The divide between what’s right for B2B and B2C will diminish by default of the standardization of the devices being used.

  1. Who’s Da Boss? It Might be a ‘bot.

As marketing and CRM platforms automate workflow of tasks, many marketers will find themselves reporting to a robotic system rather than a human being. The danger zone will be amplified as companies struggle to identify when a human needs to be involved, like when to send a tweet or determine the timing of a campaign based on market research data.

  1. Your Brand Reputation Isn’t an Algorithm

Online reputation management will transform from predominately robotic SEO that matches up with the latest Google algorithm for ranking your favorable mentions, to shifting to value-added authoritative content that is shared with third-party validated media platforms, not your old-school wire releases alone.

  1. Authenticity & Anonymity in Product & Employer Reviews

As 2015 has come to a close, giants like Amazon are experiencing the backlash and responding with adding ‘VERIFIED PURCHASE’ to their product reviews as trust has dramatically eroded in the authenticity of product promotions versus genuine reviews. That struggle will be accentuated as employer review sites will face the same issue of verifying the authenticity of company reviews. Until now, they had little to no consequences. However, the threat of litigation will force them to do something, and the pressure to generate advertising revenue will result in more paid sponsorship and paid reviews which will further erode consumer confidence in the trusted brands.

  1. It’s Not You, It’s Your Phone!

With GPS-enabled apps such as Google Maps and Waze, which enable your smart phone to pinpoint your location at all times, advertisers will create new WAZE to remind and reward you for stopping by their store. Already in action, loyalty coupons beamed to your smart phone will become the new way to get your business, and eventually replace the old coupon clipping routine.

About the Author: Mr. Gal Borenstein is a recognized expert and strategist in digital branding, marketing trends, social media, advertising, online reputation management and public relations matters. He is the founder and CEO of the Borenstein Group, a top digital branding and marketing communications firm in the Washington DC metropolitan area that serves clients locally and globally. He is the author of new business leadership book, ACTIVATE! How to Power Up Your Brand to Dominate Your Market, Crush Your Competition & Win in the Digital Age, available in premiere bookstores and on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles and Apple’s iBooks. Gal has published his first business leadership book What Really Counts for CEOs in 2009. Since then, Borenstein has been featured as a guest commentator on CNN and Fox Business News on strategic marketing trends and branding issues, as well as, been one of the top digital branding content contributors to influential business leadership social media networks such as LinkedIn, PR Week’s The Hub, Advertising Age’s BtoB magazine, HR.Com, Smart CEO Magazine, DuctTapeMarketing.com and others. He can be reached at 703-385-8178×28 or email at gal@borensteingroup.com or @galborenstein on Twitter.

Top10TrendsInfographic 2016 Large 1

Another article about digital trends with Gal Borenstein- http://www.itbusiness.ca/blog/3-cmo-trends-for-2016-show-how-digital-disruption-is-evolving/63828

Social Media Is A Business: Should It Be Regulated?

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Privacy is rare these days. With social media, the Internet, and other media sucking in and spitting out content every second, literally no one can evade being consumed by the virility of the digital age. When social media sites were on the rise in the early 2000s, the culture of ‘sharing,’ ‘liking, and ‘posting’ exploded. Thoughts, expressions, and opinions are shared constantly on sites like Facebook and Twitter, but site users do not realize the impact of their social media use. These platforms are built on the First Amendment, promoting the ideals of freedom of speech, but let’s be real, social media is a business. They thrive on sponsors and advertisements that use social media sites as an opportunity to reach specific consumers with NSA-level of demographic accuracy, which we give away willingly along with our photographs and lifestyle preferences.

Every like. Every share. Every comment is calculated to determine the user as a certain buyer and that is advantageous for B2C and B2B corporations. Social media is evolving advertising, as advertising is funding social media. But with recent questions of privacy laws and regulations in social media, it seems like the topic of unregulated content has become the new age debate and may effect the social media business.

The Elonis vs. United States case is just the beginning of the evolving debate on whether social media should be regulated or not. The Supreme Court voted in favor of Anthony D. Elonis for his threatening posts on Facebook, but the trial tested the limits of how far the law can go in prosecuting someone for online posts. In Elonis’ case, the posts were not justifiable for prosecution but will the standard for threats and zealous accusations need to evolve to keep up with technology?

People can be cruel and audacious when guarded by the veil of social media, Elonis, a prime example. And the recent case of Facebook posts displaying graphic photos of battered women, promoted sexual harassment and physical abuse, undermine the better intentions of the social media site.

Fortunately, these photos with captions that demeaned women cannot be found on Facebook anymore. A campaign, by UK activists, to have those posts taken down gained so much attention that companies like Nissan UK and Nationwide UK suspended their advertisements on Facebook, after realizing their Ads had randomly appeared next to those offensive posts. Under pressure, Facebook stated their intolerance of such content, pulled it off the site, and even revised their guidelines.

Avoidable? Completely. Facebook is a private company, allowed to regulate the content produced on their site, set guidelines for unfavorable content, but why did it take for advertisers to pull out their Ads for Facebook to start regulating? Perhaps the ideals of freedom of speech need to be protected, but the people exploiting social media to make threats or be offensive should be held accountable and expect to be faced with scrutiny and liability. If anything, these posts shouldn’t even make it onto the site.

Elonis escaped prosecution now, but would he in five, ten years? Social media is no longer a chat room where people can state opinions with no repercussions. It is an extension of current social life and honestly a business that needs to uphold standards. It is not to be taken lightly anymore and people need to understand that privacy on Facebook is nonexistent. So as an advice for the future, think before you post.

 

By Melanie Hsu, an Intern at the Borenstein Group – Washington DC’s Expert B2B Digital Communications Agency. Melanie studies at American University, majoring in International Business and Marketing.