We at Mitra Creative are proud to announce our latest achievement–the creation of a new brand and progressive new website for NURTURE MARKETING (Nurturemarketing.com). Nurture Marketing (formerly the Nurture Institute), is a full-service marketing agency that offers a broad spectrum of traditional and non-traditional services (lead generation, communications, direct mail, e-mail campaigns, assessments and planning, branding, training and meeting facilitation), as well as a highly-developed platform of channel marketing services (they have built comprehensive programs for Microsoft, Nokia, and others).

The concept of Nurture Marketing was originated more than 20 years ago by the company’s co-founder and one of its senior partners, Jim Cecil. It focuses on combining good marketing principles with the nurturing of prospects and customers to dramatically increase sales revenues. Today, Nurture Marketing is not only a set of best practices, but also the name of a powerhouse of a company, led by Jim, and the company’s other partners, Eric Rabinowitz (Jim’s co-author on the successful books, “Nurturing Customer Relationships,” and “101 Business Love Letters“), Barbara Pfeiffer, and Jennifer Herold-Garcia. They believe in, and now ARE, Nurture Marketing.

We were invited to bring our business expertise, award-winning design acumen, and our technical expertise to the task of taking an objective look at the former Nurture Institute, and now (with the new branding), Nurture Marketing’s visual brand and web presence and uplift and modernize it–in keeping with Nurture’s progressive offerings and recent, significant growth. We took the company’s now-previous brand assets and revitalized them with a fresh, forward-looking visual sensibility. We also built a new website for Nurture from scratch — approach, design, development — utilizing a modernized, easy-to-use content management system framework, powerful, provocative 21st Century aesthetics, and a true Web 2.0/3.0-and-beyond information architecture. For example, we put Nurture’s Blog at the center of the site’s Homepage, enabling a “living dialogue” with prospects, clients, and business partners, and tying together follower and consumer communities.

Nurture Marketing’s management team is thrilled with the results. According to Eric Rabinowitz, “Thanks to the design, creative, and implementation team at Mitra Creative, we now have a magnificent new brand and website that reflect the quality of our work, and our service to our customers.” We are thrilled to have been given the opportunity to serve this wonderful company and team!

With the release of WordPress® 3.0, the popular Blogging platform has taken another step toward becoming a full-fledged CMS (Content Management System) along the lines of Joomla® and Drupal®.

The first thing a user will notice about 3.0 is the new default theme. “Kubrick” has been replaced by “Twentyten.” Twentyten allows you to choose your own header image, and with the click of a mouse, you can determine whether a Page layout should be one or two columns. WordPress 3.0 also includes a greatly improved menu management system, so that a non-technical user can create customized menus on a Page-by-Page basis.

Version 3.0 has not changed the fact that WordPress allows you to choose from a wide array of plug-ins. Again, with a few clicks of a mouse, you can download and install a plug-in that will give you a contact form, manage comment spam, optimize your Pages for SEO, and even go so far as to provide you with an e-commerce solution.

The role of a website is changing. It is no longer the unique representation of a company or individual on the Internet. Today you can follow a company or individual on Twitter or and Facebook, connect on Linkedin, and post comments to a Blog.

For each Page you build in a WordPress website, you have to confront the questions–is this a Page or a Blog? Do I allow comments or not?  In a way, it provokes the question: what is now a Website vs. what is now a Blog? With modern tools available, a Website should no longer be just an online brochure. It should, similarly to the example cited above about the use and “conversational” aspects of Social Media platforms, encourage active dialogue with site users, including information seekers, consumers, those who are interested in what you have to say and what you show/demonstrate on your site, and more. Because WordPress started out as a Blogging platform, it is highly suited for this interactive world.

One of my company, Mitra Creative‘s, most important clients is Derive Technologies. We produced Derive’s now multi-award-winning interactive site, and continue to work with them to refine their messaging, support ongoing needs for their website — including the development of new tools, SEO, drawing additional business development/lead generation value from it, and much more — and .

Derive is a renowned, Wall Street Area-based Infrastructure consultancy which has served the needs of New York businesses for more than two decades. Their reputation as technology problem-solvers for small to large clients in the Healthcare, Financial Services, State and Local Government, Legal, Advertising, and Education industries is nearly legendary. Leading worldwide brands such as Hewlett-Packard (HP), Microsoft and Citrix have turned to Derive not just as high-volume sellers of their services, but as Elite, Platinum and Gold alliance partners–the highest level of relationship that solution providers like Derive can attain. With Citrix, Derive is a “Platinum Solution Advisor,” wherein, according to Citrix, they “play a big role in Citrix processes, programs and policies and are a valuable business resource in designing and improving our route to market engines with customers.” Derive also maintains Platinum, Gold and other marquis-level relationships with giants such as Cisco, VMware, Panasonic and others, and has built a powerful Healthcare technology specialization extending far beyond standard IT sales and support.

Derive’s John Wood, a partner in the business, and the company’s Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Development,  is a visionary. He attended several of the seminars that I have been giving on behalf of Mitra Creative — largely, to-date, for Microsoft partners — about Web 2.0 origins and tools, and the use of online social communities/social networking, Blogging, and social sharing for business development, lead-generation, problem-solving, viral marketing, talent recruitment and more. Most of the presentations that I have made have been to the owners of IT Business Consultancies and to marketers. After seeing/hearing one of my presentations, the highly forward-thinking John Wood asked me to give a talk on the same topic to Derive’s Sales team. Challenged with giving Sales professionals tools to increase their customer reach, John is not satisfied only using the “standard” techniques and offerings that are commonplace in the IT Channel. He sees the current and future wave of social media and wants to get the Derive team ahead of the curve.

I attended, and made my “IT Business 2.0″ presentation in, a Derive Sales meeting, held yesterday (6/16/2009). I was thrilled to observe such attentive faces and active listening as I discussed the use of communities such as LinkedIn as a “living CRM” for business development and resource acquisition, the social-professional use of Facebook profiles and pages — including a “how-to” guide and responding to questions about appropriateness and methods of personal and professional information sharing — the power of twitter and micro-blogging, the reach of viral marketing through social sharing/bookmarking (especially to promote company — and/or company + partner — events and news), the use of other social networks (especially contextual and industry-specific networks), my Web 2.0 “chaos theory” (yes, “good chaos!”), etc. During and after the hour-long presentation, there was plenty of lively dialogue and were many questions. The time flew by… and I was barely able to scratch the surface! I felt that, both for the audience and for me, there was a hunger for more. I was right–at least 10 members of the Sales team asked me to come back and do a follow-up session. Before I could say that I’d be happy to approach John about scheduling another appearance, the next question from these Sales executives — of many different professional profiles, ages, etc. — was “when?”… this, meaning how soon can you (*I) do it?

John Wood knew the session would be very valuable for Derive’s Sales team and that they would have interest in the topic. However, when I told him that so many people approached me about a follow-up presentation, he was bowled over by their enthusiasm. “I’ve been in this business for more than 20 years…” John said to me. “In all that time, and after sitting through countless presentations to Sales, I’ve NEVER remembered this team, or any Sales team, asking for someone to come back again. CONGRATULATIONS.” (He followed this with a high-five-like handshake.) Always the cutting-edge marketer, now eager to adopt the principles of Web 2.0, John then said: “You should talk about what happened today at Derive on the Mitra Creative Blog and let everyone know about it. I encourage everyone in the Channel to engage Mitra to educate them on this important topic!”

I look forward to the next session for Derive — which we will schedule soon (in which I will speak about the nuts and bolts of permissions and privacy, more about the tactical use of contextual and vertical social networks, about Blogging, and about creating and implementing a corporate policy on Social Media use) — and to conducting more of these programs for other important IT Business Solution providers.

Mitra Creative is proud to announce our design of the exciting, just-launched Multimedia Blog for the Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley (Sutter Health).

The Blog is a “living dialogue” with members of the California Bay Area community on the progress of the design and construction of the new Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley facility, projected to open on or before January 1, 2013.

VISIT THE BLOG BY CLICKING HERE

Mitra Creative designed the Blog under the direction of Cassandra Phelps Clark, Project Communications Director for the SMCCV. The project was managed by Social Media & PR Consultants Cathryn Hrudicka of CreativeSage(tm)/Cathryn Hrudicka & Associates and Shelly Gordon of G2 Communications.

The Blog features:

• Complete media galleries – video, photos, downloadable information sheets and soon, podcasts. (All of this media will continue to grow.)
• Fully integrated social media, social bookmarking and micro-blogging widgets
• Updates from multiple stakeholders on the project, events and more.
• Numerous opportunities for those who are interested in following the progress of the SMCCV initiative to learn more through LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and other social networks and to share information with colleagues, supporters of the project and friends.

For Mitra Creative, the SMCCV Blog project is another foray into our ever-deepening Web 2.0/Web 3.0 practice, as well as a special step in the development of our new Healthcare practice.

We look forward to continuing our relationship with the Sutter Team and Cathryn Hrudicka to support ongoing design and application-related needs for the Blog. We look forward to receiving your comments on our work and feel free to add comments to posts on the SMCCV Blog!

VISIT THE BLOG BY CLICKING HERE

We migrated Mitra Creative‘s hosting and mail to a new platform over the 2007 Thanksgiving weekend. This temporarily disabled the Mitra Creative Blog. It is now operational again.

We look forward to continuing to provide informative entries in weeks, months and years to come. Stay tuned!