The BlackSheep Marketing Blog

Another Reason to Join LinkedIn

Back on 7/30/08, we wrote about LinkedIn and its recent surge as a great business tool. After getting LinkedIn fever, I spent about an hour a day for a week or so, building my profile, importing my address book, sending out 177 invitations to connect with colleagues, clients, vendors, family, and friends.

And here's two more reasons to jump on the bandwagon: First, it drove 8.9% of our website traffic in July. We're able to track referring sources to our website and LinkedIn referrals grew 378% from June to July. It's a major eyeball channel for awareness of our company overall and did bring in two inquiries so far.

Secondly, it turned into a effective networking tool to begin our recruitment search for a new account executive. With LinkedIn, plus a database of unsolicited resumes we've collected, we were able to eliminate any need to pay for a recruitment ad or headhunter.

Transition to Transit Advertising

With sky-high gas prices, more and more commuters are climbing aboard public transportation across the country as a cost-saving alternative to driving.

A national opinion poll by a market research firm called GfK surveyed 2,000 adults who own cars and found that 8 percent of motorists said they would begin to use public transportation once gas hit $2.50 a gallon, which it has already well surpassed. That figure increased to 16 percent at $3 a gallon, 26 percent at $3.50, 40 percent at $4 and 59 percent once the price of a gallon of gas exceeds $5.

What kind of numbers are we talking about? For example, Friday, June 20, was the third-busiest day in the 32-year history of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area Transit Authority with more than 850,000 people riding the rails. Our recommendation is to consider transit advertising as part of your media mix

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Color Us Spring

If you're like us, you're dyin' for some sunshine right about now.

For a little taste of the (hopefully near) future, you can take a look at Pantone's predictions for color trends in Spring 2008.

We're not quite sure what "snorkel blue" is, but it's got to be better than "rainy sky gray."