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All Marketing Should Be Optimized – Geoff Livingston & Gini Dietrich

Posted on 17. May, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, Gini Dietrich, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Photo Credit: Geoff Livingston – Flickr

[Note from Lee: The growing trend towards integration of marketing and communications disciplines has brought a tremendous demand for guidance and insight. I'm happy to say that my friends Geoff Livingston and Gini Dietrich have published a new book about just that. We rarely publish guest posts but the message of integration and optimization in this book blend perfectly with our core messages here.]

One of our favorite books to come out in a long while is Lee’s Optimize. We love the three discipline approach — content, search and social — to online marketing. Without integration across all marketing disciplines we fail to understand the customer experience.

We just published Marketing in the Round on a overarching integrated communications, traditional and new, and see online as the backbone for all marketing today, on or offline.

Consider the customer experience. They weave between traditional broadcast and print media into online seamlessly. For example, someone could ride their local train or subway, see ads, surf the Internet on their mobile phone, read a magazine (on their tablet or not), or a host of other activities.

You get the point. Customer media use supersedes tactical practices. That’s true for both B2B and B2C, though as Lee points out in his book, these sales cycles are very different.

Multichannel marketing applies to traditional print, broadcast, mail and PR approaches, too. They should all be optimized for search, too, with messaging and keywords that will invoke familiarity with stakeholders regardless of which media form they are seen.

Think about it. Customers search when they are looking to find something. If you optimize online ads, content, social and SEO so that search indexes your company’s name first, then you absolutely need your print ads, direct mail, press documents, white papers and broadcast ads to use the same keywords.

A customer may not even realize it, but they are mentally associating these words — message components — with your brand. When they search, they will use the keywords, and your optimized content will naturally come up in the top results. More importantly, it will already be familiar to your customer.

Take it a step further and add your creative, ads and content to the web site in a the modern press room. Transcribe the broadcast media so the keywords are searchable. Make them shareable. and start real discussions on them. Even ask for feedback on the ads. All of your traditional content can be repurposed, optimized and indexed for social and search.

That’s why all marketing disciplines should be integrated and operate together as a collective whole. Marketing in the Round discusses selecting traditional tactics and newer disciplines like social, online and mobile. It’s about how to weave them together to achieve the common objective.

Geoff Livingston is an author and marketing strategist, and serves as VP, Strategic Partnerships for Razoo. A former journalist, Livingston continues to write, and most recently he co-authored Marketing in the Round, and authored the social media primer Welcome to the Fifth Estate.

Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, a Chicago-based integrated marketing communication ?rm. She also is the founder of the professional development site for PR and marketing pros, Spin Sucks Pro and co-author of Marketing in the Round.

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5 Content Marketing Assets You Forgot You Had

Posted on 24. Apr, 2012 by Stanford Smith in Blog, content marketing, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, storytelling

Stanford Smith obsesses about how to get small business blogs noticed and promoted at Pushing Social, except when he’s chasing large mouth bass!

It’s usually a look of pure terror.

I’m sitting across the desk from a professional and confident marketing executive. We’ve discussed the benefits of social business. He is on board with making the changes needed to create a culture that embraces customer collaboration and is ready to get started, but we have one thing left to cover…his content marketing plan.

Specifically, how to produce interesting content and how to publish it on a regular basis.

That’s where that look of terror comes in.

He fears that his business doesn’t have anything to say that would interest consumers. His fear deepens when he realizes the need to publish relevant (even epic) content on a regular basis.

Fortunately, producing amazing content marketing isn’t as daunting as many think.

In fact, most businesses are sitting on a treasure trove of entertaining and relevant content that their prospects and customers would love.

They just need to find unlock it.

Here are five places to look:

Testimonials and Case Studies

Have you created a process for identifying satisfied customers and recording their stories? Customers love to see the experiences of others who have considered doing business with you. These testimonials and case studies add credibility to your value proposition.

One testimonial can turn into a formal case study, a video for YouTube, and add practical depth to a whitepaper. Gather your customer-facing staff and identify current “fans” and create a process for capturing their stories.

Stats Are Sexy

Many businesses collect data that their customers would find extremely valuable. B2B companies are particularly suited for finding and producing statistically based content. The best way to get started is to create a survey and distribute it to your customer base. Take the survey results and create an insightful special report or whitepaper. Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report is an excellent example.

You can expand the reach of your reports by turning them into presentations for SlideShare and creating a simple video for YouTube.

Turn Your Customers into Stars

Every business has a marque customer that is a reliable source of recommendations and referrals. Turn this customer into a celebrity. Create a content series that promotes the customer’s business and their use of your product.

Cast your customer as the hero and your product as the trusty sidekick. Add staying power to your promotion by creating a series of blog posts supported by Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn promotion. Don’t be surprised if your customer makes your content the centerpiece of their marketing attracting additional prospects for free.

Day-to-Day Business

37Signals, the creator of Basecamp, recently released a major upgrade to its popular collaboration software.

During their release promotion, they published several videos documenting the development of the software. These videos were supported by blog videos and quick visual sketches of user interfaces. The additional content was a hit with tech startups and small business owners who admire 37Signals’ culture and marketing savvy. Of course, these same folks were in Basecamp’s target audience too!

You can do the same in your business. Grab a camera and record key brainstorming sessions, one-off interviews with team members, and impromptu celebrations. Your fans will love the insider’s glimpse, and you’ll attract new customers as well.

Employees

Your employees are prolific content creators. Customer service personnel create customer satisfaction stories on a daily basis. Your sales team has a gold mine of field-tested value proposition tales at the fingertips. Take a moment to ask and you’ll be shocked how many bloggers, Twitter addicts, and Facebook mavens you have at your disposal.

As always, harness this creative energy with social media policies and incentives that educate and empower your employees while protecting your brand.

Time to Go Hunting

Spend some time talking with your employees, sales team, and customers before you write your company off as being too boring or tight-lipped to produce great content. You’ll be surprised by how much content is sitting right at your fingertips.

5 Reasons Linkedin is Boring in a Good Way

Posted on 03. Apr, 2012 by Anthony Juliano in Blog, Guest Posts, linkedIn, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing, social networks

Anthony Juliano is the Vice President of Marketing and Social Media Strategy at Asher Agency, a Midwest-based marketing strategy firm. Anthony speaks and writes about a variety of social media and marketing topics, with a specific focus on LinkedIn. Connect with him at AnthonyJuliano.com.

LinkedIn has a reputation for being… well, a little dorky. In fact, if social media sites were high school kids, Pinterest would be the prettiest girl, Facebook would be the most popular kid, and Twitter would be the cool, edgy dude with a knack for setting trends.

What would LinkedIn be? Remember the nerdy kid who got straight A’s but who didn’t go to the prom, mainly because it was on the same night as chess club? Yeah, that’d be LinkedIn.

This has certainly been perpetuated in the media. Tech Crunch has called LinkedIn “the boring social network that won’t find you a date but may land you a job.” CNN’s Victor Hernandez said on Twitter that “LinkedIn is boring’ is fast becoming its corporate motto.” And Business Insider took things a step further by saying that “LinkedIn’s lousy sex appeal could end up killing it.”

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman: too sexy for this post. 'Reid Hoffman' by jdlasica on Flickr

So, are they right? Is LinkedIn boring? The honest truth is that it can be–certainly as compared to the likes of Facebook, Pinterest,  and Twitter. But is LinkedIn’s lack of “sex appeal” a bad thing? In reality, the fact that LinkedIn is boring may actually be one of its greatest assets. Here are a few reasons why.

1. LinkedIn’s audience is focused on work, not play.

If you want to talk about shopping, books, movies, hobbies, or you personal life, you won’t find much of an audience on LinkedIn. Most LinkedIn users, you see, are laser focused on their professional life, looking for resources that can help them grow as professionals or help them grow their business. That makes LinkedIn a lot like real-world business networking events–which can be, admittedly, a little boring (especially in comparison to the pool party that is Facebook). The advantage, though, is that if you focus your efforts on LinkedIn on how you can be a resource to your connections, your approach will likely be well received.

2. No photos or videos means more focus on words–including your words.

If you look at what generates conversations on Facebook, you’ll quickly see that photos and videos get more attention than text-only status updates. On Pinterest, of course, photos are the whole point. LinkedIn is much different. The only photos on the site, other than those in ads and stories, are users’ profile photos. The only videos are the rare few you’ll find embedded in company pages or member profiles (like this one). That makes text dominant–and presents a great opportunity to keep the audience focused on what you have to say, if you say it well and make it relevant.

3. Less activity overall equates to less noise–and a better chance for you to stand out.

Because relatively few LinkedIn users update their status, the news feed is pretty quiet–especially as compared to Facebook and Twitter. That presents another opportunity for you to stand out simply by being willing to share what you know.

4. Unlike Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, LinkedIn won’t likely lead you down a rabbit hole.

I’ve heard friends talk about getting “sucked in” to Pinterest, and losing “hours” on Facebook and Twitter. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone make the same statement about LinkedIn. From my perspective, one of LinkedIn’s biggest advantages is that users log in, get what they need, and log out. There aren’t a lot of people using LinkedIn just to kill time, and that means they’re more action oriented and intentional then they are on other sites.

5. No “wall” and no “tagging” means you have control over your message.

The great thing about your Facebook profile is that it’s shaped by the people in your network as much as yourself. It’s all about interaction, and letting others define the terms of the conversation by mentioning your name in status updates, for example, and tagging you in photos. But what if you don’t want others to chime in, or what if what they say isn’t helpful to you? What if, for example, you want to focus your Facebook page on your profession, but your friends mention you in statuses and tag you in photos unrelated to your work? That’s where LinkedIn users have an advantage. There’s no wall, and no tagging, so the opportunity for others to publicly engage with you are limited. Pretty much the only way they can jump in is by liking or commenting on your status updates, and it’s unlikely they’ll say something wholly unrelated to the conversation you’ve started. That makes for less engagement–but a more focused message overall.

The truth is, LinkedIn does offer a lot of things that are pretty exciting. A great window into your contacts’ world and the chance to make an impression on them every day. The opportunity to understand–and leverage–the interconnections within your network. An unmatched conversion rate. And just like that nerdy high school kid, a lot of untapped potential.

So, if you’re looking to hang out with the cool crowd, LinkedIn may not be for you. But if you want to focus your efforts and connect with an audience that’s equally as focused, you’re likely to get exactly what you want out of LinkedIn–as long as you’re willing to put up with a few yawns along the way.

Content Marketing for Professional Services: Does It Cannibalize Your Business?

Posted on 27. Mar, 2012 by Joe Pulizzi in Blog, content marketing, content strategy, Guest Posts, joe pulizzi, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media consulting, sxsw

Guest post by Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and Junta42. Joe evangelizes content marketing around the world through keynotes, articles, tweets and his books,Managing Content Marketing and Get Content Get Customers. If you want to get on his good side, send him something orange. For more on Joe, check out his personal site or follow him on Twitter @juntajoe.

In my second trip down to SXSW, I had the distinct pleasure of presenting with Jay Baer, my good friend, a CMI consultant, and one of the best social media minds in the game. The title of our session was, “Does Free Content Cannibalize Your Paid Consulting?“, and it focused on content marketing strategies and tactics for professional services companies.

As a good content marketing best practice, we’ve put together the highlights of the presentation below, along with the downloadable SlideShare version.

Is content marketing required for professional services companies?

“Technology is shifting the power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are in control.” –Rupert Murdoch

In the past, there were barriers to entry for any non-media company, let alone paid consultants or professional services companies, to get traction from its content marketing. These were:

1. Death of the intermediary: Although media placement and coverage can still be incredibly effective, it is no longer necessary. We can now communicate directly with our customers and prospects, if we have compelling and relevant information to share with them (can you say opt-in?).
2. Access to talent: In the very recent past, it was challenging for professional services companies to attract the kind of journalistic talent necessary to create and distribute truly remarkable content marketing. That is no longer the case. More and more journalists are making the leap over to the dark side (non-media side) where, frankly put, more resources and opportunities present themselves for great content creators.
3. Viable technology: You, me, and the sign post can all create a blog in five seconds or less. Social media channels abound for publishing purposes. Marketing automation services are available to all. There are no more excuses.

The recognition that we are media companies

Professional services companies need to realize that they are in competition with not only other consultants in your space, but also media companies in your industry, Google, and the billboard down the street. That means we need to develop and distribute content that is as good or better than anything else in our industry to attract and retain customers.

So, we are indeed all publishers today.

There is only one thing that separates the content developed by a media company and content developed by brands like Intel, John Deere, or LEGO: How the money comes in.

For a media company, content is created in order to make money directly off the creation of content through paid content sales (direct purchase of content) or advertising sales (someone sponsors the content that is created, like we see in newspapers and magazines).

For a non-media company, content is created not to profit directly from the content, but, rather, indirectly by attracting and retaining customers.

In all other respects, the content creation activities in both types of companies are generally the same. Both needs to be authentic and credible. This is important to realize, in that non-media brands are competing with traditional media for attention and retention, just like you compete with the other businesses in your field.

The three-legged success stool

In order to be found in search engines, to drive inbound leads for your organization, and to be successful with your social media strategy, you need remarkable storytelling. Simply put, your content marketing strategy must come before your social media strategy.

You would think since more professional services companies are realizing this, and that the barriers to entry are gone, that content marketing success stories for professional services companies would abound. Unfortunately (or fortunately), most paid consultants and services companies now realize that content marketing is really hard.

Recent Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs research shows us that the biggest content marketing challenge for B2B marketers is developing content that truly engages customers and prospects.

For this strategy to work, it takes patience, commitment, and excellence at the craft. Professional services companies need to shift their thinking and realize that, in order to be the leading experts in their industry and get online referrals, they need to be creating consistent, valuable, and compelling content.

The Content Marketing Institute story

Although we do offer some paid sponsorship opportunities as part of the Institute and our premier event, Content Marketing World, the majority of our online leads come in for our consulting practice, headed by Robert Rose.

In our session, Jay called this strategy a “Trojan Horse Effect”, where we look and feel like a media company, all to generate interest around the consulting practice. Jay may indeed be right.

Since launching CMI in May of 2010, we now average nearly 100,000 unique visitors a month on our sites. We have over 70 active content contributors to CMI, producing two posts per day around “how-to” content marketing as well as content marketing news. Over the past three months, we’ve received dozens of qualified inbound leads into our consulting division, six of which are Fortune 500 companies.

Partial Google Analytics Chart with Referrals Showing for Content Marketing Institute

The best part is that these companies come to us ready to buy, and our sales cycle has dropped, in some cases, to just a few days.

6 concerns/myths about consultant’s content marketing

But while our belief is that giving away your knowledge (as much as possible) leads to substantially more opportunities, how far should a professional services company or paid consultant open the Kimono? Let’s discuss.

1. My clients don’t consume online content: We hear this all the time. A paid consultant will say that they target CEOs, who don’t use search engines or social media. Recent Google research tells us that the average consumer engages in over 10 sources of information before making a buying decision. Also, according to research from Doremus and the Financial Times, over 60 percent of senior executives read blogs, watch online video, view webcasts, and use professional networking sites like LinkedIn.
2. We don’t have time to create content: Online content marketing is the ultimate informational annuity. For example, Jay shared his statistics on just one post on social media strategy he created almost three years ago. The post still attracts an average of 300 people per day (to just that one post) and has led to multiple pieces of business for Jay.
3. We can just do social media, we don’t need content: Jay’s Content Marketing Necessity Scale says it all. If people are already talking about you online in the right places, you don’t need as much original content as those that aren’t yet invited to the party. Frankly, if you want to be shared and talked about in social media, you need some amazing content to make your social media go. As Jay says, “Content is fire. Social media is gasoline.“
4. We can just do a blog: Today, a blog is just a ticket to the ball game. Sixty-five percent of B2B companies have blogs today (according to CMI and MarketingProfs research). In order to be the leading expert for your industry, you need to take story ideas and adapt them to channels, like blowing a dandelion in the wind. For example, with the Content Marketing Playbook, although the eBook was the main content product, we produced a SlideShare version, multiple podcasts, multiple blog posts, a news release, an enewsletter version, snippets in our print magazine, Chief Content Officer, guest blogs, promotions on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more.
5. We’ll give away all our secret sauce: Contrary to what some people believe, a prospect doesn’t read one blog post and buys on the spot. Through our content, we develop attention, then interest, then action. So you’ve got to work it by solving the pain points of your customers. Yes, you may give away your secrets, but having a grocery list doesn’t make you a chef. Those customers that want to take your advice and do it themselves?… fine. Those are not the kind of customers you want. What you need to do is show your expertise and insight, and have smart executives recognize your talent.
6. We shouldn’t talk about price in our content: Jay and I call this the Marcus Sheridan effect. Marcus is owner of River Pools and Spas and is now a prominent marketing speaker and consultant. Marcus was able to sell more fiberglass swimming pools than anyone in the country by sharing everything, including specifics on price. Just type in anything around pricing and fiberglass pools into Google… Marcus always comes up and dominates the search rankings. This same philosophy has also worked in his marketing practice. If you can’t talk specific pricing, at least talk about the dynamics that go into pricing. This is your competitive advantage waiting to happen.

4 things to know before you dive into content marketing

1. Know your niche: Where can you be the leading expert in the world for your specific buyers? It’s better to go smaller and broaden out once you dominate your niche. Think as if you were a trade magazine. Vertical is in, horizontal is out.
2. Know your audience: Jay’s practice targets the social media practitioner, and has truly focused on this with this Social Pros podcast series. He doesn’t want all people interested in social media, just practitioners. It’s an important distinction. The same goes for OpenView Venture Partners [disclaimer: I am an advisor], who is targeting successful technology entrepreneurs looking for capital to grow, not just any entrepreneur.
3. Know your budget: Just read this budget and content marketing investment post for agencies from Jay. Enough said.
4. Know your metrics: Here are the four key metrics for agencies, as well as a content marketing ROI analysis considering the three kinds of measurement indicators for your business.

Thanks again to everyone who came to the presentation. Here are the slides below to pass around at your discretion.

Social Networking Spam – 5 Rules for Marketers

Posted on 20. Mar, 2012 by Josh Mackey in Blog, email, facebook, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media measurement, social networks, spam, Twitter

Josh Mackey is General Manager at PeekAnalytics, a Social Audience Measurement Platform. (More importantly, a family man and sport loving Aussie who loves life).

There has been a lot of talk recently about social networking spam – inactive and bogus accounts on social platforms. While I agree inactive and spam accounts can raise unwanted questions for platforms, these claims should not discourage marketers away from the platforms themselves. Instead of admitting that this “social thing” is not as easy as all that, some are pointing fingers at the platforms, saying SPAM! SPAM! Bad ROI…Spam! Bad CTR…Spam!

The rhetoric above might make for a great headline, but for me it’s lazy sensationalism. Anyone who claims that Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn or Facebook do not have robust ecosystems, full of amazing insights and opportunities for brands as well as individuals alike, is simply delusional.  That said, marketers who face pushback on social networking spam issues need to be prepared to respond head on.

The advice below comes from insights that I have gleaned from being neck deep in social audience measurement product development for the past year and a half.

Rule #1 – Don’t mix the water with the wine.

Instead of focusing on the spam or inactive accounts, marketers should just accept there is some “spam” mixed in with the “bacon” on every platform, channel or network. It’s about finding tools, best in class techniques and smart marketers that will allow you to get to the bacon, “smell” the bacon, get to know the bacon, and in the end, get the bacon to buy your product and then tell their friends to also buy your product. Mmm bacon!

Don’t skew your analysis with incomplete data. You are better off dealing with a quality subset of audience data to analyze rather than a much larger mess of incomplete and questionable data. Set yourself up with a “minimum cutoff” point that excludes accounts out that don’t have a certain amount of information you require to form a complete analysis. A Twitter account with nothing more than an @name, sharing dating site links every hour on the hour, provides little usable data and obviously stinks of spam. Analyze your audience with a tool that allows you to filter out incomplete and junk accounts.

Rule #2 – Seek out real people.

Social Networking Spam – You Are What You Tweet

Go out of your way to engage with people who are transparent about their identity (I personally think Google+ has this right). Someone who unites their online and offline identity is much more likely to not only engage with people they have met offline (e.g. building stronger relationships), but will also generate a more trusted and larger network online than people using only fake identities and/or usernames. In very few cases do I trust a person or content when that is hiding behind a fake name with no digital footprint or identity. Unfortunately, many marketers have been duped and lured into buying followers from sketchy sites. Trust me: this is not the way to social media success and will only create a false economy by skewing your ROI metrics to unattainable levels.

Rule #3 – Engage with others as you would like to be engaged with.

Remember that a quality audience will always trump quantity. There are many theories that all you need on social media is “100 true fans” to get a message started. The definition of a true fan can be debated, but in reality, for the viral effect to happen, all you need is good content and a few raving fans who have trusted networks of their own for a message to go far and wide. Therefore, focus on building a community of people who will support you as you support them.

Rule #4 – Be humble and honest with yourself!

Take a realistic view of your audience. If you have 10,000 followers, don’t use 10,000 in your click through percentage calculations. Understand that some accounts are inactive, some are social networking spam, very few people sit on Twitter all day waiting for you to tweet. Use tools that try and measure the true size of your audience at any one time and tweet during hours that your audience is potentially awake, engaged, etc

Rule #5 – Remember and respect the meek! For the meek shall…also buy your products.

Every fan matters! 40% of active users don’t tweet! Find a tool that can measure your entire social audience and don’t just focus on the active (talking) audience. You have customers who have chosen to follow you (which may be the only action you see from them on Twitter) but they still have the ability to purchase your products after they read about a sale at the local store from your tweets!

Conclusion

Who doesn’t remember naysayers who claimed: “spam will kill email,” “IM is killing email,” “Social will kill email,” etc? Guess what: Just like the humble text message, email is fine; the value that it delivers for users and marketers remains because it is a powerful and imminently affordable communication platform. Twitter, Facebook, Google+ all have spam issues, no different than every other valuable communication platform that ever existed. Each platform is currently taking unique and aggressive steps to ensure the average user experience is not marred by spam. Social networking spam filters are still in the relatively early days, but big progress is being made.

The value is there; you just need to know where to look and how to create value and a reason for consumers to care about your brand. Get over the “spam” siren call and focus on finding the bacon! If you can’t or refuse to, please feel free to build a platform that is user friendly, has millions of users and is spam free…we will all come join your platform and make you super rich! It will be awesome. Really.

Voice Computing Puts the Words Back in Your Mouth

Posted on 13. Mar, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Guest Posts, mobile, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Guest post by Tim Hayden, co-founder and CMO of 44Doors, a mobile SaaS and consulting firm based in Austin, Texas.

As tens of thousands of technophiles rolled into Austin last week, many of them pondered the possibilities of voice search and interactive voice response. The week prior in New York, I had a number of Inbound Marketing Summit attendees awarding a victory to Apple, telling me that SIRI obviously is the clear winner by putting such technology into iPhone 4S users’ hands in late 2011 (and now the iPad, in version 3). If playing with your phone to gain answers to questions such as, “where do we bury the bodies?” and “which restaurant is best for a Catholic on Fridays during Lent?” means game-over, then maybe they have a point.

Truth be known, there is something much more transformational happening with smartphone proliferation than a quirky mobile search and voice-to-text functionality. At large, we are moving away from traditional computing and typing, and we are regaining our voice.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Our push-button lives on touchscreen devices have us typing less already. We can navigate our way through directional information and answers in our favorite mobile apps, and through a simple Bluetooth connection we can dial a number and send a text just by “talking to” our cars. Just think about the other 50% of Americans who will purchase their first smartphone over the next two years, who will be liberated to leave their desks and enjoy a day on-the-go in physical meetings and doing as they wish with spare time gained beyond the office.

The evidence is all around us that voice and face-to-face communication are the natural, preferred ways for us to communicate. I can all but guarantee that this shift back to a more “human” way of communication will surely disrupt social media and everything we know today about marketing…faster than we can plan around it.

5 Trends in Voice Computing

Here are five developing trends in technology that will shape the next leap in real human communication:

1. Face-to-face mobile conversations: while Apple’s FaceTime may have been the torchbearer, you will be hard-pressed to find a smartphone without a camera on each side to ensure you don’t blink when telling your wife you are working late.
2. Web Meetings: whether you’ve hung out on Google+ or used your webcam to pitch a client with GoToMeeting, it has never been easier to switch a simple chat to a “look me in the eyes” conversation.
3. “In-Person” Experiences: whether it is a full wall or a large format monitor, Cisco TelePresence is changing the way remote board meetings, court depositions and daily huddles are being hosted, many times thousands of miles separating attendees.
4. The rise of the “undevice”: if you thought Microsoft Xbox 360 was all about games, fitness and Netflix, just wait until you are running Windows 8 on that same console with Kinect, and only your voice and your gestures can dial up Grandma and share videos of the family dog without holding a handset, remote or keyboard (Remember that Microsoft shell out ~$9B USD for Skype, the first to master video over IP?).
5. Future-tense social media: What began as predictive analytics to help advertisers intercept your next Facebook check-in has now become a new form of accountability between friends to be where they state they will be at the time they said they’d be there. The active practice of proving you’re good on your word with apps such as Forecast actually encourages physical exchanges and experiences. After all, isn’t that what make social media truly social?

The first typewriter landed on a desk in the late 1800s, and we have been upright and walking for more than 4,000,000 years. Our “evolution” to stop typing, and dare I predict we almost stop text conversations entirely, should come as no surprise to any of us over the next decade.

What have you noticed recently that shows you are regaining your voice?

The Hybrids are Coming: Evolution of the Prototype Marketer

Posted on 28. Feb, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Guest Posts, human resources, inbound marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business, social media marketing, social media ROI, social media staffing

Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) is founder and CEO of PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency, and author of The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley).

Digital marketing has revolutionized the industry, and the job market. Corporate marketing departments and marketing agencies struggle to recruit and retain qualified professionals for career paths that did not exist three years ago, while academic institutions are faced with the need to adapt curriculums to the real-time nature of business.

The most valued talent in the emerging marketing agency ecosystem will be hybrids. Although specialists, connectors, and soloists can still excel with focused competencies and service offerings, disruptors are built on the versatility of social-media and tech-savvy professionals. They possess exceptional copywriting skills, along with dynamic personalities that enable them to build strong personal brands.

Hybrid professionals are trained to deliver services across search, mobile, social, content, analytics, web, PR, and email marketing. They provide integrated solutions that used to require multiple agencies and consultants. — The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley), pp. 68.

Forward-thinking organizations seek hybrid professionals who are highly proficient writers, analytical and tech savvy, with a strong grasp on business, IT and human behavior. These next-generation professionals excel in the emerging core-marketing disciplines of mobile, analytics, social, web, search and content. They envision on a strategic level, building fully integrated campaigns, and they have the capabilities to execute on the tactical level, conducting activities that drive real business results.

But, there is a talent gap. Your organization can bemoan the lack of qualified professionals in the market, or it can take the initiative to create dynamic internal education programs, find candidates with A-player potential from diverse educational backgrounds, and develop employees into the hybrid professionals who will become the future leaders of our industry.

Catalysts for Evolution

In The Marketing Agency Blueprint, I outline three forces fueling transformation of the marketing-services industry: change velocity, selective consumption and success factors. These same catalysts have a direct affect on the type of talent organizations must recruit, train and retain:

1) Change Velocity

The rate of change, continually accelerated by technology innovations, has created growing demand for tech-savvy marketing professionals. Specifically, trends and shifts in consumer behavior, business processes, software, data analysis, communications and marketing philosophies have impacted the essential competencies and traits of prototype marketers.

2) Selective Consumption

Selective consumption is the basic principle behind inbound marketing, the philosophy made popular by HubSpot. In essence, consumers are tuning out traditional, interruption-based marketing methods, and choosing when and where to interact with brands.

As a result, organizations in every industry are shifting budgets away from print advertising, trade shows, cold calling and direct mail toward more measureable and effective inbound marketing strategies—fueled by content and social—that cater to consumer needs. Thus, marketers must be trained to plan and execute inbound marketing campaigns, integrated across traditionally siloed disciplines.

3) Success Factors

Marketing campaigns are not about winning awards for creative, building the flashiest websites, gaming Google for higher rankings, generating mounds of media coverage, or negotiating the lowest cost per thousand (CPM) as means to interrupt the largest audience. The job of a marketer is to produce results that impact the bottom line.

Marketers have the ability to consistently produce more meaningful outcomes—inbound links, click-through rates, website traffic, landing page conversions, content downloads, blog subscribers and leads—that can be tracked in real time and directly correlated to sales.

Rise of the Generalists

As Jay and Amber detail in The NOW Revolution, organizations should, “Search for well-rounded professionals with core business skills that can translate across roles and enable them to excel in an ever-changing environment.”

The future of marketing belongs to the generalists, the hybrids. These marketers are the key to increasing efficiency and productivity, building an insurmountable competitive advantage and fueling your organization’s growth.

So, the question becomes, is your business prepared to compete in the age of the hybrids?

(Video) 4 Mistakes You Make When Posting Video on Your Blog

Posted on 21. Feb, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media optimization, video, Video Marketing

Guest post written by Rocky Walls, who has more than 10 years’ experience in digital content creation. As CEO of 12 Stars Media Productions, Rocky works with businesses to create video that’s so real and simple it changes audiences into relationships.

It’s no secret that embedding videos on your blog post is a great way to attract readership and conversion. However, using video to its fullest potential involves more work than slapping an embed code on an otherwise empty post. Here are four common mistakes we’ve seen along with some tips to help ensure that you make the most out of a video on your blog post.

1) No Indication That There is a Video in the Post

You should let your readers know right away that your blog post contains a video. You can accomplish this in two ways.

First, specify it in the title of the post. A good way to do this is to star the title out with “(VIDEO)” – this will let folks know right away that the blog post contains a video. Following “(VIDEO)” write your title as your normally would. For example, a good video blog post title would look something like: “(VIDEO) A Private Tour of Our Offices.”

Secondly, be sure your embedded video appears relatively close to the top of the post. If possible, you want to avoid the video appearing below the fold. Even if readers ignore the title of your post, they will see right away that there is a video on the post if it appears towards the top.

2) No Text Content

Too often we see blog posts that are comprised solely of an embedded video. It’s a good idea to give your readers some context before asking them to watch an entire video. Introduce your video with a few sentences, and then summarize the video in a paragraph below. If you’ve transcribed the A-Roll in your video, you can use some of that content to form the summary paragraph.

(Editor’s note: Here at Convince & Convert, we use Speechpad.com to transcribe our video interviews and the http://socialpros.com podcast)

3) No Customization 

Another common mistake is not optimizing the size of the video to the width of your blog. Whether you use the old embed code or an iframe from YouTube, the first line of the embed code will always start with <object width=”560″ height=”315″> – make sure that the width of the video doesn’t exceed the width of your blog’s content column. It’s best to find the width of the column and set your video width to just slightly less. Don’t be afraid to employ a little trial and error – set a resolution, check to see how it looks, and then make a tweak if its necessary. The height will always conform to the width by automatically adding black bars to the top and bottom of the video in order to maintain the aspect ratio.

You can also customize the code for other aesthetic value and advanced functionality, such as allowing/not allowing related videos and setting a specific start time. Check out this post from the 12 Stars Media blog that talks about ways to customize your embed code to optimize overall viewer experience.

Agencies: Walk Your Talk

Posted on 17. Feb, 2012 by Margie Clayman in Blog, Guest Posts, margie clayman, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing, social media strategy

Marjorie Clayman is the resident blogger at www.margieclayman.com. She works at Clayman Advertising, Inc., her family-owned full-service marketing firm.

Recently, Jay wrote a post here called The Only 4 Reasons agencies Should Care About Their Own Content. In addition to making me think about the specific content marketing angle, Jay’s post brought to mind what may be a key problem haunting the reputation of agencies in the business world. In a desperate effort to prove their value, I fear some agencies may try to guide their clients in areas where the agency lacks knowledge or expertise. This can sometimes create miracles, but it can also create the scenarios that inspire people to cast agencies as the “bad guy.”

To illustrate this point, let’s take a look back at another post Jay wrote, this one back in 2010. In this post, called The 7 New Roles Agencies Must Play To Survive Real-Time Business Jay talks about different roles agencies need to undertake in order to be useful in this new world of marketing. Let’s look at each of these 7 roles and how a lack of knowledge or experience could create disaster instead of value.

The Cartographer: Jay suggests that agencies need to be able to guide companies on how to map a social media campaign, not only so that the company can interface with the external world but also so that everyone within the company is on board.

The agency must understand how to navigate the online waters and the agency must also understand how the internal workings of the company have been formulated. What needs to change within? What messages will or will not work in the online world?  If an agency moves into consultation mode without understanding or experience, they could map a path to disaster for their client.

The Scout: Here, Jay notes that an agency needs to be able to know how to insert the company into relevant conversations in the social world. Opportunities are out there and the agency’s role is to guide the company towards those opportunities.

One need look no further than the recent Camry debacle on Twitter to see how bad advice can create a PR disaster instead of a social media success story. If an agency does not understand the difference between tweeting conversationally and spamming everyone in a certain demographic, they are only going to create heartache for their clients.

The Interpreter: In this mode, the agency should be able to dissect a company’s message and spread it like dandelion seeds across the online world.

If an agency attempts to counsel a company on how to do this, or if an agency begins to work in this manner without understanding the company’s true brand in addition to the best ways to repurpose and alter content for different platforms, the entire effort will once again backfire.

The Politician: An agency in today’s world needs to explain to companies how to converse in the online world so that brand evangelists or fans are not simply collected but are actually nurtured into the role of customers (you know, people who buy things).

On the surface, this can seem like an easy goal to achieve. All you have to do is talk to people and drive them to a page where they can buy your stuff, right? But if an agency begins to guide their clients towards just that mode of operation, or towards buying fans and then trying to nurture them, what will happen? An agency must be well-versed not only in the company’s brand but also in how that company’s customer base wants to receive communications. Where are they? What do they respond to? This is only the tip of the iceberg, too. If an agency does not have experience in legitimate marketing, they may misdirect their client away from a branding message and more into a “what is our Klout score” type of campaign. What is the pay-off for that kind of scenario?

The Firefighter: You’ve seen companies like BP melt down in the online world. More recently, the Susan G. Komen Foundation had to battle an online blaze. The agency in the firefighter role needs to have a plan in place to fight these fires as soon as the first spark is lit.

An agency that is unfamiliar with the intricacies of PR, not to mention PR as it exists via the prism of social media, could cost their clients everything. An agency must have enough familiarity with policy-making, their clients, the online world, and potential reactions to different types of news so that they can guide their clients away from these ugly disasters. If the agency guides their client towards a misstep in these cases, it can cost everyone involved everything.

The Accountant: An agency working in the marketing world today MUST be able to understand how to measure everything. Yes, that includes social media marketing. A recent survey indicates that only 24% of companies measure social media success based on increased revenue. An agency that fails to show the impact of social media marketing on overall sales will lead their client straight to the red. Agencies must be accountable for the marketing they propose and execute for their clients, and marketing carried out on social media platforms is no exception to that rule.

The Trainer: In this case, an agency can take on more of a consultation role as it provides suggestions and advice to a client executing its own social media marketing plan. It’s not hard to figure out that an agency with little experience in or knowledge of social media marketing can easily create disaster for this company. Bad advice about blogging, tweeting, or a Facebook page can make the social media gaffe grapevine in 5 seconds flat, and then we are back to the PR disaster scenario.

It’s easy for companies and their agencies to feel like the world of marketing today is nothing but silver bullets that can cure all of those recession ills. However, it is incumbent upon agencies to make sure that all knowledge handed out to their clients is credible, backed by at least some knowledge and experience, and verifiably true and useful. If some agencies out there are missing this key point, it could be the primary reason that agencies get such a bad rap in the online world these days.

What do you think? Is a lack of preparation creating the bad reputation that agencies have today? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Will The Rise of the Photo Apps Kill the Written Word?

Posted on 14. Feb, 2012 by Ekaterina Walter in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for company-wide social media enablement and corporate social networking strategy. She was recently elected to serve on the board of directors of WOMMA.

Overall, the statistics point in just one direction: blogging is dying. A 2011 study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth researching social media usage by Inc 500 companies (who have a strong usage of social media generally) found that the use of blogging had dropped to 37% from 50% the year before. 74% and 73% of the Inc 500 use Facebook and LinkedIn respectively, and the study concluded:

“Fewer [companies] are using blogging, message/bulletin boards, online video, podcasting and MySpace.  More companies are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, downloadable mobile apps, texting and Foursquare.”

The rise of image driven apps such as Pinterest, Tumblr, or Instagram is another trend that various commentators have jumped on to hail the death of the written word in generating sales.

Word Killer Number One: Pinterest

Pinterest, the virtual social pin board for themed images and interests, is currently ranked 5^th for driving traffic referrals, behind Facebook, You Tube, Twitter and Yahoo. Google+ ranks at number 9. (Source: Experian Hitwise US) But before brands can start getting too excited about the commercial potential of Pinterest, it’s worth looking at the type of traffic it is generating. Of the top 10 brands on Pinterest, 9 are lifestyle/retail. Pinterest is a visual medium that works best for lifestyle and retail industries, where customer decisions are particularly based on visual appeal.

But Blogging Actually Works

Another 2011 study, this time by Hubspot, focused solely on companies concerned with inbound marketing and painted a different picture. They found that:

• 57% of companies using blogs reported that they acquired customers from leads generated directly from their blog.
• Businesses are now in the minority if they do not blog. From 2009 to 2011 the percentage of businesses with a blog grew from 48% to 65%.
• 85% of businesses rated their company blogs as “useful”, “important” or “critical”; 27% rated their company blog as “critical” to their business.

What this actually suggests is that blogging is becoming more ‘niche’; rather than an all-purpose tool it is being used with more specific goals in mind. Companies who may have not been all that dedicated to maintaining a blog are finding other communications channels, such as image applications, work better for them. Brands that get value from their blogs are just as committed to that form as ever, but may have also added other platforms to their communications toolbox to interact more flexibly with a wider variety of audiences. Socially savvy brands like Dell, for example, report significant cost-saving benefits from having a support blog in place which helps reduce the volume of the call center calls. But it doesn’t mean that Dell doesn’t have other touch points with its customers on various networks.

The way I see it, social networks cannot truly replace the role blogging plays in company’s content strategy and credibility-building. Your blog is where you share your best content; social networks are channels which support the distribution of that content. Helpful, genuine and targeted blogs bring a number of benefits to a brand:

• Thought leadership: being viewed as a trusted source
• Improved customer service
• A way to humanize the brand
• Contextual relevance
• Better connections with customers which leads to increased loyalty and advocacy
• Differentiation from competition
• Improved search engine optimization

Having a network of blogs where each blog focuses on a particular topic or audience is a great strategy employed by a number of successful companies. It allows you to connect with relevant customers in a meaningful way.

It’s Not Blog OR Social Network, it’s Blog AND Social Network

Companies are asking themselves, what media is best for interacting with customers? This might be image-driven, video, or another visual medium. If short messages are the best way of reaching customers, tweeting, texting or using Tumblr might be preferable. A company with a local customer base might be more suited to Foursquare.

But these platforms are not mutually exclusive, and in fact are highly compatible. Brands can use their Facebook page, their Pinterest account, and their blog to drive traffic, often using cross-promotion. How they use them will depend on the message.

What we are seeing is the fragmentation of information on one hand, but its conglomeration on the other. As content strategy becomes more ‘niche’, the potential for sharing that information across a multitude of platforms brings a kind of umbrella to the process, tying it all loosely together. So a successful blog will be joined up to a whole range of social media channels: it might come up in a Google Plus search, or a good blog infographic might be taken and shared across Pinterest.

We’re moving away from one-size-fits all social media approach and towards niche usage. So no, blogging is not dead: where the written word is the most appropriate form of communication it is stronger than ever. Blogs are generating leads, showcasing thought leadership and supporting customers in an ever more relevant way. Where blog usage has fallen, it is because the written word was not the most suitable method of communication, and other media forms have proved a better fit. Brands are thinking harder about the ever-expanding range of communication channels available to them, and where they are blogging it is because they have made a conscious choice to.

A good blog will focus on long-term audience engagement, and that’s something that is still often best achieved through the written word.