In these tough economic times, marketer’s budgets are getting slashed and the situation requires innovative thinking to leverage small dollars. Virtual events are now part of the marketing mix and a good means of creating marketing dollar leverage. Jennifer Jones spoke to Brent Arslaner of Unisfair, a virtual events company for marketing and recruiting purposes about they are seeing their business increase 100% year over year growth due to marketer’s demand. Forrester says 20% of US companies have used virtual events at some point in their marketing.

Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix, and Jennifer Jones discuss the pros and cons of citizen journalism and the objectivity of journalists today. Tolles also describes how Topix which is the largest news community on the web provides an interesting business model for marketers to advertise locally. Tolles mentions how Walgreens used Topix to run a successful campaign.

Making a corporate culture more innovative, and open, so it can listen and share is the advice of Forrester VP and Analyst of Customer Experience, Bruce Temkin. He believes it is time for corporate management to change and adopt his 6 new imperatives. Temkin and Jones discuss how to do this, and describe the best practices of LEGO who Temkin believes is a good example of an open communicative culture.

John Yemma, the new editor of the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) which is celebrating its 100th year anniversary in 2008, told Marketing Voices’s Jennifer Jones how his publication is blending the roles of the online version with the print version. Although they are shifting most resources to the web, the CSM will have a print version as Yemma believes print has a place in the future of journalism. The CSM is seeking journalists who have a web background in addition to being journalists—quite a talent to find.

Intuit recently launched software with community building capability built into its functionality. Scott Wilder, group manager of their small business group, tells Marketing Voices how their users are loving the product already. The functionality is not a link or popup, but part of the overall community experience. It is unique for sure, and other corporations will most likely follow Intuit’s lead.

CEO Hans Peter Brondmo, of Plum, talks to Marketing Voices about their free service that helps save, share and organize a person’s digital life. Brondmo also gives Jones insights into Plum’s newest product offering being announced October 13 and his perspective on the social media trends he sees in the months ahead.

What does being good at design and being able to build a community have in common? Plenty says CEO of HiveLive, John Kembel. Also a consulting associate professor of the Institute of Design at Stanford, Kembel talks to Marketing Voices about how the process of doing good design has similarities to the process of building a good community. The brainstorming and iterative thinking is similar in both professions and empathy for the customer is a solid need as well says Kembel.

There’s new science in the art of strategy and communication. Social media is a tool of strategic communications – a tool that can help impact influence. Trying to put this all together is exactly what Alan Kelly, CEO and Founder of The Playmaker’s Standard has done. He developed a periodic table that names, describes and prescribes influence plays. He talks to Jennifer Jones about this system, and how it can help communicators and business strategists better impact their communications especially those in the social media world.

Figuring out what is a best social media strategy for a corporation is now easier with KickApps. The company provides on-demand social media, online video and widgets applications to grow online audiences. Marketing Voices talked to Michael Chin, Senior VP of Marketing for KickApps and learns how to best use Facebook as part of a corporate social media strategy.

Everyone wants to know what venture capitalists are investing in and why in the social media space. Spencer Tall, Managing Director of Allegis Capital tells Jennifer Jones just what it takes for a company to make the grade and why. Tall and Jones talk about the ebb and flow of a deal and the process of evaluating a deal that can make returns of 5x or more.