User Friendly Thinking  

If your company has yet to take the leap into the use of social media for marketing, join us this Friday, October 30, when we interview well-known marketing consultant Valeria Maltoni as she makes the case for social media.

We'll be covering such topics as why companies are slow to embrace social media, strategies for adoption, social media time management, and why companies firewall access to social media and what to do about it.

Valeria is a professional marketer with 20 years of real-world corporate experience, 10 of which online, across a broad array of mid-to-large sized companies.

She was handpicked by Fast Company to write about creating conversations between marketer and customer. She built one of the first online communities affiliated with the magazine.

Valeria's blog, Conversation Agent, is recognized among the world's top online marketing blogs.

This week's guest on User Friendly Thinking is the show's co-host Paul Chaney, Internet marketing director with Bizzuka, the company that sponsors the show.

Paul is the author of the newly-released book The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

During this episode Paul will talk about the changes in cultural trends and consumer behavior that mandate the use of social media for marketing, discuss some of the more popular tools in use today, and share a three-prong plan of action for social media engagement.

Ed Bennett, Director of Web Strategy for University of Maryland Medical System joins John and Paul on the Friday, October 16 edition of User Friendly Thinking radio to discuss the state of healthcare and social media.

Ed has been chronicling the growth of social media in healthcare on his blog, Found in Cache, especially as it pertains to hospital's adopting its use.

In addition, we will discuss the role peer-to-peer healthcare plays and focus on what the future holds where this is concerned.

Ed's is one of the most highly-respected voices speaking to this issue. If healthcare marketing is a topic of interest to you, do not miss this episode! The show airs at noon central every Friday here on the Blog Talk Radio network.

Small business in small towns are what our guest on the Friday, October 9 edition of User Friendly Thinking radio is all about. They face unique challenges, especially during this recessionary period.

Small business marketing consultant, speaker and editor of Small Biz Survival, Becky McCray, joins John and Paul to discuss how small businesses can not only survive during the recession, but thrive as well.

In today's sputtering economy, when every company needs every customer they can get, properly managing those who are demanding and complaining can mean the difference between thriving and closing the doors.

To help companies manage those difficult customers, authors Marilyn Suttle and Lori Jo Vest have written Who's Your Gladys? How to Turn Even The Most Difficult Customer Into Your Biggest Fan.

Marilyn joins John and Paul on the Friday, October 2 edition of User Friendly Thinking to address that very issue. If you run a business, you have difficult customers, so you don't want to miss this episode.

User Friendly Thinking airs every Friday at noon central.

Pharma marketing consultant Steve Woodruff talks with John and Paul about how the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry is making use of social media.

Steve is Founder and President of Impactiviti. He’s known as the Recommendation Guy in pharmaceutical sales training.

He has a decade of experience consulting with numerous pharmaceutical clients on training and marketing solutions, including technology platforms and global applications.