 Your new post is loading...
There are compelling reasons to blog and while it’s sometimes a slow ramp, data shows that bloggers who are persistent and increase their blog frequency can yield leads and sales from their efforts. The chart above is proof that bloggers shouldn’t lose faith – in fact they should have a little patience and be persistent in their blogging effort. More evidence is the progress that the team at PrimePay , a national provider of payroll, tax and HR services, has made over the last year using HubSpot to blog consistently. Because they appeal to a very specific target market, Nancy and her team didn’t set out with a goal of extensive readership – rather, they wanted to share valuable content that would enable them to become thought leaders in the payroll services space....
...The power of storytelling is something so many businesses fail to realise in marketing their brand and products. When information is communicated in story form, studies show people better relate and remember it. Stories have the ability to spark emotions, whether it’s happiness, empathy, trust or anger. When listening to them not only are the language-processing parts of our brain activated, experiential parts of our brain come alive too. Stories about food activate our sensory cortex, motion stories activate the motor cortex – fundamentally our brains are more engaged when listening to stories.Brand storytelling isn’t new; companies have used advertising to evoke emotions through storytelling for years. However the landscape has changed, the digital revolution spurred new platforms, channels and devices through which to share and tell stories, opening up greater opportunities, but simultaneously greater challenges.How do you cut through the noise, get your stories heard and resonate with the consumer? Here are my top tips for the art of storytelling in business...
..I was inspired to write about transcription for SEO (and more) after talking to a client at one of my previous agency roles. A few staff members at the top of the company are well known in their industry, and we wanted to leverage their popularity and standing by encouraging them to guest blog.
For one of them (who's practically a celebrity in his industry sector!), we were told this:
Client: "Well, he doesn't want to write content on a regular basis. You see, he has enough on his plate as it is with his popular, weekly, hour-long podcast."
Then the light-bulb moment happened...
Me: "Do you transcribe the podcasts into text and publish them on the site along with the audio?"
Client: "No. Why?"...
...An unintended consequence of businesses developing more of an online presence is that customers can feel as though the selling process is done entirely through robots. While researching products and services and making purchases online is convenient for the customer, it does not replace the value of having a face-to-face, informative conversation with you.
This is where content comes in.Y ou, of course, want potential customers to visit your website and to learn about your company, but it is important to add to their experience and make it more personable. Content does this by creating a conversation with the customer that develops trust with your business. It alters the way the buying and selling process works (in a good way) by establishing you as an expert in your field and allowing you to have a conversation with your prospect.Below you will find highlights from expert articles on a few of the ways you can use content in your business....
...Higher ranking in the search engines directly correlates to more traffic flowing to a website. If that traffic is targeted correctly, then more traffic typically means more leads and more customers. It’s human nature that if you solve a problem for somebody, they will remember you and reciprocate.
This applies directly to blogging as the more visitors that get helped; the more they will value helping company’s brand.In a recent study, the 2012 State of Inbound Marketing by HubSpot, it was discovered that 92% of companies that responded acquired a customer through their blog if they posted multiple times per day. The numbers are still impressive for those that post daily at 78%, 2-3 times per week at 70%, and weekly at 66%. This data along with some other metrics in their report shows a direct correlation between blogging and customer acquisition. Blogging was recorded as the most effective lead generation category as being “Below Average Cost Per Lead."...
...Content Marketing is an important element of a company’s Marketing strategy and it is a good way to raise awareness of your brand and gain new followers, but for small businesses they need to tread carefully. Posting industry articles, sharing content and writing a blog require sweat equity and time-starved small businesses often cannot afford to dedicate their time to content Marketing.
A balance needs to be reached to ensure a mixture of quality content and sales-related material is implemented into any Marketing strategy. Just don’t overuse and abuse the now cliché “Content is King” – that’s nonsense, the customer is King. LISTEN! As marketers we should be listening to what consumers want and what form of Marketing actually works rather than what we perceive to work!
A recent article entitled The Digital Gap between Consumer and Marketer by Jacey Gulden on Social Media Today highlighted the gap in perceptions of consumers and Marketers. Jacey writes about the benefits that smaller businesses have when personalizing communications with consumers, which I agree with when targeting the correct target market....
We never seem to run dry examples of easily preventable crises. Last week, an article on Home and Garden TV’s website discussing Fourth of July table settings suggested that an American flag be used as a “bright and festive table runner.” Whoops…
As you probably guessed, flocks of military vets and their families, along citizens from just about every walk of life, descended on HGTV’s social media sites to rip the network a new one for its misuse of the flag.
To HGTV’s credit, it quickly deleted the article and posted an apology, but to its detriment the apology was a weak one....
After confirming his company had been the victim of a massive cyberattack, Heartland Payment Systems General Counsel Charles Kallenbach was hyperventilating....
...But going public with a breach is a delicate matter. According to a 2013 study by the Ponemon Institute, a data privacy research institute, overly quick notifications following a breach are one of the biggest cost-multipliers. In the U.S., a premature notification added as much as $37 per record to the overall cost of the breach, the study found. When a breach involves hundreds of thousands of records, that adds up.
The tremendous scrutiny associated with data breach notifications makes getting the message right critical, said Leigh Nakanishi, senior privacy and security strategist at Edelman.
“We’re seeing many more companies being transparent when they have a breach,” Nakanishi said. “Transparency is good, but it has to be done carefully.”...
So, I thought I would take another look at oft-repeated inaccurate statements I have run across since my last article and examine each one. (Caveat – like many myths, there are grains of truths to each of the following. I list them here not to embarrass anyone who has stated the views, or believes in them – but simply to look at other sides and open people up to new possibilities and ways of thinking)....
It happened with the Washington Post‘s initial PRISM story, it happened with Glenn Greenwald’s story in which he wrote that the NSA has “direct access” to servers owned by the various tech giants and, over the weekend, it happened in spectacular fashion with a bombshell article posted on CNET by chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh.The headline that dispersed through social media and political blogs like the swine flu: “NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants.”When I spotted the headline, tweeted by a reporter who I otherwise respect, my first reaction was, “Wow. Okay.”
But as I read the article, the headline became less and less accurate — a trend we’ve witnessed several times recently. In fact, McCullagh’s reporting almost entirely disintegrated under just cursory scrutiny… but not before it went viral.McCullagh reported that during a House Judiciary Committee hearing featuring FBI Director Mueller, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) revealed that the NSA, during a previous secret briefing, admitted that thousands of NSA analysts could to listen to phone calls without warrants. That was the thrust of McCullagh’s story. But the quotes were awkwardly truncated, the tic-toc of the story was unclear and there were highly speculative paragraphs that jumped to conclusions not supported by the reporting....
What's up with traditional media and what's buzzing in digital media? A very interesting analysis... It’s been a good week for old media. The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal have all done a superb job of reporting on the NSA/PRISM revelations. Unfortunately it has also been a terrible decade for them. Newspaper advertising revenue has fallen by more than half since 2007, and paywalls aren’t even coming close to covering that loss.Worse yet, nimbler competitors are doing their breakneck best to steal the audience…and they seem to be doing it well.
I recently got curious about how frequently various news sources are shared on social media, and since I couldn’t find any tool that measured quite what I wanted, I built one myself. (And I’ve spent like a hundred dollars on App Engine server costs amassing all of its data, so I hope you appreciate this.) The results were eye-opening.My handy-dandy tool, called Scanvine, tracks stories from a panoply of online sources, measures how often they’re shared, and compares and ranks them all. Guess what its leaderboard says as of this writing? None of the above are ranked in the top three. Nor the NYT, or the WSJ, or the New Yorker. Instead, third place goes to The Onion, with an average of 2000 shares per story; number two is Cracked, with 2700; and number one, at over 3000…is much-loathed BuzzFeed....
...The starting point to understanding the how mainstream media fails to accurately report the news is the consolidation of media ownership in the United States. In 1983 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. In 2002 that number had decreased to 10 companies (McChesney & Nichols, 2002). By 2004 that number had decreased to only five companies. As Nichols and McChesney state, All in all, these [few] firms control the overwhelming percentage of movies, TV shows, cable systems, cable channels, TV stations, radio stations, books, magazines, newspapers, billboards, music and TV networks that constitute the media culture that occupies one half of the average American’s life.
It is an extraordinary degree of economic and social power located in very few hands (Nichols & McChesney, It's the Media Stupid, 2000, p. 28).Five companies control the bulk of information disseminated to the American public via mainstream media. How can one have a diverse discussion of ideas if a handful of people or, in the case of the media, a handful of corporations controls the information that the public receives via mainstream media? The answer is that one cannot. Corporations have one interest in mind: Profit above all else. Financial gain is their only reason for existence. Informing the public is not the corporate media’s principal function, making money is....
PR packs power in the nutritional wholesomeness that is today's marketing smoothie. Today's hybrid PR is blended with the whole -- integrated marketing.Back in the day, public relations, advertising and marketing were firmly divided in their respective silos and disciplines. We in public relations were often referred to for real in jest as the “bastard step children” of marketing.
Often we’d sit in an integrated meeting of the disciplines and keep our traps shut until we tossed out a bit of value-added strategy into the mix while our peers across the aisle glared nicely.Today, the blended nature of marketing has public relations professionals up in arms. Some are balking at the integration of PR so cohesively into marketing. In short, these people are having an identity crisis....
|
Keyword research is anything but exciting. In fact, trying to do it after a satisfying dinner and glass of wine is more likely to end with your forehead on your keyboard than a list of low-competition, high-value phrases.Unfortunately, the research has to be done. Without knowing which keywords people are searching for, it’s difficult to target the phrases that will draw search traffic to your site. That traffic is the lifeblood of your business. Whether you’re running a blog, operating an ecommerce site, or trying to position yourself as a thought leader in your niche, it begins with targeted traffic.And for that, you need the right keywords.There are lots of ways to perform keyword research. On one extreme, you can devote months to the task, drilling down into every iteration of every phrase you can imagine. Or you can do some “quick and dirty” research, using a few tools available online. There’s definitely a place for both approaches. But today, we’ll focus on the latter one. Read on for 3 quick ways to find out what type of content your audience is searching for....
Sometimes, the typical landing page strategies just aren't enough. What happens when you take a step outside the box? If you want attention, you have to break expectations. For as many ways you can optimize a landing page, the truth of the matter is, your visitors expect a certain amount of “sameness” from sites like yours.
That’s a problem. Because when you blend in with others in your category, your messages aren’t fully heard. Fortunately for you, I’ve rounded up 5 unique landing page strategies that will help you break your visitor’s guessing machines, and open them up to what matters most – the content....
...Purported measurement services like Klout, PeerIndex and Kred quickly sprang up to fill this gap, but they only served to add to the confusion when they tried to lead marketers into believing that popularity meant influence. Brands soon found out that this approach was far too simplistic because it had no feel for the real nuances of influence marketing, and subsequently began to look for more definitive answers. Online Media Daily reinforced this thought process with its recent post, "Social Scoring Is An Industry, But Marketers Are Skeptical," by Gavin O'Malley. O'Malley pointed to a research study which suggests that marketers remain skeptical about the value of these online social scoring platforms.A February online survey of about 1,300 marketing professionals, PR consultants, and business executives was conducted around the topic of influence by Sensei Marketing and the consultants at ArCompany. Results showed that 55% of the respondents do not find these services useful for finding influencers. Other key findings included...
.... Fortunately there are ways to dramatically cut down on the time spent trying to grow your social communities and spreading your brand awareness throughout the numerous social networks.
In this post I will cover four smart ways you can automate the growth of your communities and drive fresh, qualified traffic to your store so you can spend more time on other areas of your business.Implementing the tactics covered in this post will result in more traffic driven to your site, more sales and faster growing social communities....
What do The Walt Disney Company and the WWE have in common (other than lucrative merchandising revenue and a cast of memorable characters? If you followed the Dachis Group’s Social Business Index, which “analyzes the effectiveness of strategies and tactics organizations employ to engage the market through social channels,” you’d know that Disney and the WWE are two of the most socially savvy brands out there. Apparently, people are still gaga for staged fighting and Donald Duck.
Did these corporate giants reach such great social heights by pursuing the exact same social media goals? Of course not. Disney and the WWE are vastly different companies with vastly different business objectives. You don’t market sweaty, hulking wrestlers the same way you do talking mice.These two very different companies achieved social media success by applying specific social media tactics to achieve specific business objectives.
You may not be a multibillion dollar business with a killer mascot (at least not yet), but you can still do social like the best of them, so long as you connect your business objectives to an effective social media marketing strategy....
On June 6, 2011, Scott Pelley took over as anchor of the CBS Evening News, his tenure following Katie Couric’s five-year run. The once-dominant newscast had fallen to third place behind NBC and ABCduring the end of Dan Rather’s reign, and Couric’s stint saw the broadcast fall to record ratings lows. While still No. 3 among the Big Three, the CBS Evening News With Scott Pelley has seen significant growth since the Texan took over after a long run at sibling 60 Minutes.
In the past year, the 6:30 PM broadcast has added 490,000 viewers, the largest annual increase for the network’s evening news in 15 years and the best among the broadcast news rivals since 2002. Overall, the CBS Evening News is up 12% in viewers since Pelley’s debut. Just before his second anniversary in the anchor chair, Deadline spoke with Pelley about the relevance of cable news and why so many mistakes are getting on the air....
If you’ve been using social media strategies to create loyal followers, you’ll have a decisive advantage when a crisis hits. Companies that have an advanced social media strategies in place will mitigate a negative event quicker and with less financial loss. Here, we are going to take a look at three areas that will help you manage a crisis with social media: tools, tactics, and tips....
It comes as no surprise that, in the aftermath of what most considered a balanced article about the Oakland Raiders in Sports Illustrated, team owner Mark Davis fired the team's public relations director.
According to reports in The San Francisco Chronicle, Davis didn't like the way S.I. '...painted him or the job done by his father, late owner Al Davis, in the previous 10 years.' So, PR Director Zak Gilbert was cut from the squad.
Chances are you have seen an Internet meme by now, especially if you spend any time on social media. Grumpy Cat rules the Internet in much the same way most cats rule their houses. Most people enjoy memes, and for a good reason.
Typical memes, by design, appeal to the 12-year-old in all of us – they are either funny, cute, raunchy…or all of the above. Better still? Memes are free and easily transferred between people online – and they hold a great deal of potential for being seen by a lot of people. Enter Internet memes for business; what marketer or business owner would turn down an opportunity to use a technique which is already so popular…and inexpensive?
Are Internet memes for business a good idea? Sure, people like memes and share them – a lot. Organizations that want to increase their online presence may find memes are effective in spreading their names and messages. On the other hand, brands may want to consider the possible negative ramifications in regards to their reputations. What may seem like a good idea at the time could result in problematic consequences when not completely thought out. Serious businesses rarely succeed by building their foundations on trendy topics....
The fictional tale about war correspondents will make you laugh till the person next to you on the subway thinks you have problems. It is also, according to writer Alexander Nazaryan, an all-too-real parody of the glory days of print journalism....In only a few years, a child will ask a parent about newspapers: What was their purpose? What did people do with them, and why?
The parent, a little flummoxed, will explain that, long before biosensitive data aggregators simply uploaded information into the neurons of our frontal cortexes, people actually read the news by holding a piece of paper in front of their noses and scanning columns of text with their eyes. There were many such newspapers, to be read in the morning, over breakfast, and in the evening, over scotch. The newspapers competed with each other by sending actual people out into the actual world to report what had taken place, was going to take place — or, even, was alleged to have taken place but didn't. On days when there was little so-called news to report, the newspapers filled their pages with stories about, say, puppies who could recite Macbeth or people who wore jeggings to work. Also, there were crosswords.
Of course, this fictional parent could give his/her fictional child Evelyn Waugh's Scoop — a fictional 1938 tale of British foreign correspondents reporting on a civil war in the fictional East African country of Ishmaelia. Fictional, yes, but to a journalist like myself, most everything about the novel is too real. Waugh was a master at mixing humor and pathos, as evidenced by his two most ambitious novels: A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited. Scoop, on the other hand, is all laughter, of the sort that will make the person next to you on the subway think you have problems...
Does working in PR make me a kissing cousin to Darth Vader? After all, I used to be a reporter – I was one of the hundreds of casualties...
... This is the reason why so many reporters are choosing to go into PR. We’re in the unique position of having been on the receiving end of countless press releases and pitches. Many of my former Herald colleagues are now doing PR work for both businesses and nonprofits. Some have started PR firms of their own. So, reading a recent Buffalo News article about TV reporters joining the PR ranks made me think about how annoying it is when I’m told I’ve “gone over to the dark side.” This is not Star Wars and it’s not that simple.
First and foremost, many of us simply reached the point where we needed a little more job stability than newspaper reporting could provide. Because right now most people working in print newsrooms are enduring increased workloads – picking up the slack after all the layoffs and resignations – while having their pay slashed....
Many of today’s burgeoning brands are successful on the Web in part because of their ability to produce stellar content, content that emanates from the passion they have for producing quality products and the desire to please their fans and consumers by exceeding expectations.
As people immerse themselves in valuable content on the Web via social media, as well as reputable sites like BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and Gizmodo, brands and marketers are finding ways to bridge the gap between journalism and advertising by becoming publishers.Brand journalists combine brand storytelling with traditional forms of journalism, helping brands connect with their audience in a more personal, transparent way....
|
Lots of learning and valuable social media insight from an old-school newspaper that gets social.