by tradesmeninsights | Apr 13, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Content is king as I’ve learned from mentor Michael Gass. He says it doesn’t matter how great a writer you are, if people don’t read it, then there’s no benefit to anyone. I’m sharing his 10 tips which I try to live by when writing for social media. I’m a living testament that if you follow the rules, your writing will be read and shared.
According to a social media study by King Fish Media, HubSpot and Junta42, original content, both branded and expert, is by far the most employed tactic for social media.
And … “businesses that blog get 55% more website traffic than those that don’t.”
Creating valuable content increases website traffic that will equate into new business leads. But writing for the web can be daunting, even for experienced copywriters. They are often the ones that struggle the most with making the transition from print to web.
“Content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.” – Jon Buscall
You need to think carefully about structuring and formatting your online content to ensure your readers find it and read it. Here are my 10 tips to help you write better for the Web:
- Provide a Reader’s Digest or Executive Summary version. Readers love bullet pointed and numbered lists. That’s why so many readers are attracted to post titles that offer 10 tips or 25 ideas, etc. The work you do on behalf of your readers to simplify will be greatly appreciated and keep them coming back for more.
- Key words in every post titles. Write for SEO. It doesn’t matter how great your article is if no one can find it. A simple tip to help boost your rankings in Google search is to identify and use certain key words in every post title. 90% of my posts will contain ‘ad agency new business’ in the title. It helps not only for search but will also help drive ‘targeted traffic’ as your posts are repurposed through Twitter. With only 140 characters that you can use for Twitter, that’s not much more than your title and a shortened URL.
- Lead with the conclusion. I advise that you begin each post by starting with the conclusion, a take-away or benefits statement. Just answer this question, ‘what is my benefit if I commit to read this post?’
- Break up long paragraphs. A reader’s attention span online is much less than for print. Readers tend to scan instead of reading word-for-word. Keep paragraphs concise and short.
- Be sure and provide hyper links to your sources. Don’t be afraid that you will lose your audience if they go to another source. Your blog should become a repository of helpful resources for your readers.
- Make your content scannable to the eye. Use bold, italics, quotation marks, indentation, etc. to make copy pop. A person should be able to quickly scan through your article and get the most important parts.
- Write in an Inverted Pyramid style. Similar to the way a newspaper reported would write, the most important copy should be at the top of your post.
- Use common language. This is an opportunity to do away with industry jargon and agency speak and write content that resonates with your intended audience.
- Get to the point, quickly. Online readers are extremely impatient. If you wade into a story and it takes 3 or 4 paragraphs to show how it relates, you will have lost your audience before you’ve made your point.
- Make your post visually pleasing. I always include a nice photo or graphic to further drive home the main purpose of a post. Using them will create interest and help draw in a reader.
Follow these 10 tips and it will help get your message delivered.
by tradesmeninsights | Mar 29, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Twitter
Twitter is an under-utilized tool that businesses should be using more.
There are well over a hundred different Twitter tools that have been developed. Recently Michael Gass, my social media mentor, came up with a helpful list.
Below are his top 5 tools that he uses for new business that will help you create an online community of your best prospective clients. Each makes Twitter a more powerful marketing tool for your online new business efforts.
TweetBeep
This tool is like Google Alerts for Twitter! Put in a keyword or website, and get emails when others tweet it! Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything! You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog.
TweetScan
You can search public messages and user profiles with results available via email, RSS, JSON, and Twhirl. You can even download your own personal Twitter archive!
TweetLater (now called SocialOomph)
Keep your Twitter stream ticking over with new tweets even when you’re not in front of your computer. Publish tweets when your international followers are online and you’re asleep. Send automated thank you notes to new followers, and automatically follow new followers, if you choose to do so.
Splitweet
Easy management for multi Twitter accounts and brand monitor. Splitweet allows the Twitter users to compose a list of accounts and distribute their tweets, choosing their release in one or more of their accounts. You can also follow your contacts’ tweets from all of your managed accounts in Splitweet. And you can easily monitor your brand(s).
Tweeter Karma
Basically, this is a Flash application that fetches your friends and followers from Twitter when you click the “Whack!” button, then displays them for you, letting you quickly paginate through them. By default, the list contains all your friends and followers and is sorted by last update, showing those who most recently updated first. You can sort the list alphabetically either ascending or descending by Twitter ID. You can filter the list in several ways: only friends or only followers, all friends or all followers, and mutual friends.
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 10, 2011 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Social media is beginning to make an impact on businesses, and a friend of mine, Michael Gass, shared with me a recent study by SmartBrief that recently surveyed 6,000 of their readers on how they use social media in a business environment.
To effectively use social media for business development, it is important to know who is using social media, how they are using it, what social media channels are being used, what goals are being pursued and tactics deployed that are providing measurable results. The State of Social Media for Business 2010 report, released at the beginning of 2011, provides information on the biggest trends and challenges.
Here are eight select themes and data points from the survey (purchase the full brief for more in-depth details):
- Most companies surveyed have adopted social media in the past 18 months. About half of the companies in the sample have been using social media for only the past year, with nearly 20% starting in the past 13 to 18 months.
- Companies are focusing their energies on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogs. The concentration on “the big 5” hints at companies being able to find their customers on these sites. With lower awareness and/or usage of other sites, including platforms such as Flickr with large numbers of users, companies might be missing out on more niche groups.
- It takes time for companies to incorporate social media effectively. More than 25% of companies with two-plus years of social media activity state that those tools and platforms have been fully integrated into their companies’ business models. In addition, more than 50% have a well-developed or fully developed social- media strategy, which is further evidenced by the use of multiple platforms.
- Brand building is currently the primary purpose for business social-media usage. Despite the primary goals of increasing brand awareness and building communities for customers and fans, the majority of companies surveyed use social media to broadcast information instead of creating two-way conversations.
- Communications, advertising and marketing agencies are the leading adopters of social media. Communications and PR agencies recognized the potential behind social media earlier than most industries. Likewise, advertising and marketing firms have realized the potential of identifying and reaching target audiences relatively early as compared with other industries. Despite their early presence in social media, communications and PR firms are not the chosen source of advice or consultation on social media for companies.
- Lack of management support and confidentiality concerns are atop the list of obstacles to social-media adoption. One-third of the respondents note they are not decision makers. Combined with the 14.7% citing management resistance, this indicates an overall lack of management support. In addition, 33.1% cite confidentiality issues as a primary obstacle. Taken together with the prohibition of social-network use at work, the data show that many companies are concerned about how their staff would use these sites.
- Less than 15% of the businesses using social media are measuring return-on-investment. Connecting social media efforts to bottom-line results is a skill that escapes most businesses that are using social media. Over 33% of the businesses in the sample are not measuring return on investment at all. Among those innovators who are measuring social media, most focus on usage and incoming traffic but not traditional business metrics.
- While 60% of respondents say their companies are using social media, there is low confidence in their social-media strategies. Companies are critical of their social-media strategies, with only 14.2% describing their strategies as “very effective” and only 7.3% describing them as “very revenue generating” on average.
These are a few of the report highlights of where businesses are in their social-media usage, confidence and measurement. The full State of Social Media for Business 2010 is available for sale from SmartBrief: http://www.smartbrief.com/research/ and includes:
- 145 pages
- 213 charts and graphs
- 6 data cuts
- Key indicators of social-media integration
- Comparative data based on company size and industry focus
- Benchmarks to assess where your company is on the social-media adoption curve
- An introduction by social-media expert and SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board member, Olivier Blanchard
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 5, 2010 | Marketing Trends, Social Marketing
Marketers in the B-to-B world and especially in the industrial or construction sectors are reluctant to try new things. One of the reasons is that in some cases their companies have been doing the same type of marketing for years, if not for decades.
Obviously over the last year or so they have been forced to think “outside the box.” Recent research from Forrester states that consumers (yes, professional tradesmen are consumers too) now nearly spend as much time online as they do watching TV.
Razorfish “Digital Brand Experience Survey” shows that even though consumers are more empowered than ever before, they still desire a relationship with a brand, and a brand has a major say in that relationship. It’s just that brands need to shift their thinking from one-way advertising to two-way consumer experiences if they want to take advantage of the attributes of the digital world.
I’m grateful to my good friend and mentor Michael Gass who passed on this Razorfish research and some key takeaways:
- Consumers are not shutting out brands – they’re interacting with them. 77% of consumers surveyed have watched a commercial or video advertisement on YouTube with some frequency; 69% have provided feedback to a brand, either through a web site or a third-party service like GetSatisfaction.com; 65% have played a branded browser-based game. Moreover, 70% have participated in a brand-sponsored contest or sweepstakes.
- Digital experiences create customers. The overwhelming majority of consumers who actively engage with a brand in digital fashion are much more inclined to purchase products and recommend the brand to others.
- Digital can make or break a brand. 65% of consumers say that a digital experience, either positive or negative, changed their opinion of a brand. Of those, 97% said that their experience influenced whether they eventually purchased from the brand.
- This is the year of the brand fan. According to this study, 40% of consumers have friended a Facebook brand page, and 26 % have followed a brand on Twitter.
Click here for a download PDF version.
