UPDATE: Miss the show? Listen to the segment HERE!

It’s the busiest time of the year, it seems, between the holiday shopping and office parties and family gatherings.

But it’s also time to start thinking about 2010, believe it or not.

And what better way to start thinking than to take a little bit of time out of your Tuesday afternoon and listen to the radio?

SG&D President Donna Barger will be a guest on this week’s Pittsburgh Technology Council’s TechVibe broadcast on 1360 AM WMNY at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.

TechVibe is hosted by Jonathan Kersting and Audrey Russo of the Tech Council and airs every other Tuesday from 2 to 6 p.m.

Donna will be discussing a little bit about what SG&D does and how we can help with your marketing efforts, whether large or small, in 2010.

So, grab a cup of coffee after lunch tomorrow afternoon, and tune in!

Just in time for the big holiday shopping season, major retailers are starting to take advantage of the social media tools available to connect better with customers.

As Doris Hajewski of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel recently reported, large-scale retailers like Kohl’s and Best Buy are using Facebook in particular to connect with customers, getting feedback – both positive and negative – and reacting to it in order to better communicate with those likely to spend dollars in their stores this holiday season.

Kohl’s has adapted its Facebook page to match its more traditional holiday advertisements, and has assigned a specific marketing team to monitor that page for customer feedback.

Bill Emerson, a former retail executive turned advisor, told the paper that leaving criticisms on retailers’ Facebook pages isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

To read Hajewski’s full article, click here.

What are your thoughts on using Facebook as a retail communications tool? Will you visit a store’s Facebook or Twitter page before shopping this holiday season?

One of the fun parts about moving into a new area is getting to know your new neighbors.

But when it comes to moving a business, meeting your new business neighbors typically requires a whole lot of networking.

Fortunately there are many really fantastic organizations in the Pittsburgh area to help us do just that, and SG&D is very excited to recently have joined two of them.

Right while we were in the process of moving, SG&D joined the Pittsburgh Technology Council.

Through our membership, we’ve met a ton of really great people and been introduced to some fantastic businesses in the Pittsburgh area who are doing some pretty amazing things in the fields of technology, manufacturing and higher education. And we’ve gotten to know the folks who make the Pittsburgh Tech Council run like a well-oiled machine.

And it was very exciting to see our SG&D markevation ad in the Tech Council’s membership directory … which is on page 11, if for some reason you hadn’t noticed it yet.

Also, a bit more recently, SG&D has become a member of the Pittsburgh Airport Area Chamber of Commerce, (now marketed as “The Chamber” as per their recent rebranding effort), where we’ve come in contact with some of our more immediate neighbors and have found a new networking group to meet with on a weekly basis.

We’ve really enjoyed getting to know members of both organizations, and we look forward to meeting more of you in the future at events!