Seth Godin made a valuable point when stating, “Marketing is about spreading ideas, and spreading ideas is the single most important output of our civilization.” Godin has made several other valuable points in his book, “All Marketers Tell Stories”. He focuses on a person’s “worldview” which is someone’s own rules, values, beliefs, and biases. Even though it is very tough to change someone’s worldview, it is possible with the correct kind of marketing.
Worldviews are both beneficial yet tricky at the same time. Worldviews are the reason why our world is a diverse place. However, it is hard for a marketer to target so many people with different points of views. According to Godin, “Worldviews are the reason that two intelligent people can look at the same data and walk away with completely different conclusions.” Marketers have found a way “around” worldviews that allow them to still market their products or services. Marketers tell stories. “Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story. People can’t handle the truth.” Seth Godin was one hundred percent right when he wrote this in his book. People cannot handle the truth, and they will do anything to go around it. In order for a marketer to truly succeed, which doesn’t happen often according to Godin, there are five steps that they need to follow.
The first step in Godin’s “All Marketers Tell Stories” is “their worldview and frames got there before you did.” He explains that the world is full of all kinds of different people with different worldviews. If everyone was the same, marketing would be a piece of cake. However, that’s not the case. Marketers need to make their advertisements accustom to everyone and their different values, biases, and assumptions. Frames are also part of the big picture. They are elements of a story painted to leverage the worldview a consumer already has. If a marketer frames their story in terms of a person’s worldview, they will be heard and noticed.
The second step Godin points out is “people notice only the new and then make a guess”. He makes a great comparison to ideas and viruses. Viruses can spread through a community by jumping host to host. Scientists study how a host interacts with the virus. The same thing goes for an idea; ideas can spread through a community person to person. Instead of seeing how a host and virus interact, we try to understand how our brain responds to the ideas and inputs we encounter.
The third step is “first impressions start the story”. People make judgments within a fraction of a second. A marketer needs to grab the attention of their audience as soon as they start telling the story or else they will lose the persons attention. A marketer should always start with something exciting and interesting, not boring. First impressions are always key.
Godin’s fourth step in his book is “great marketers tell stories we believe.” First, you have to believe in your story, or else you will not come off believable. Sounding confident and knowing what you’re talking about will draw in a bigger audience. The story sells the product and pleases the customer.
Finally, the last step is “marketers with authenticity thrive.” Godin said, “If you commit to a story and live that story, the contradictions will disappear.” No one likes a phony person because then no one will take their time to listen to your advertisement, or even buy your product or service. When a marketer is authentic, it shows, and people will stop and listen. People like hearing stories when it involves a shortcut, money, safety, fun, and belonging. These are all factors of their worldviews, and Godin said persuading someone to switch their worldview is the same as making him admit he was wrong. People hate admitting that they are wrong, and therefore will not listen to your story.
In the end, it doesn’t matter whether something is actually better or more efficient, what matters is what the consumer believes. As a marketer, it would be impossible to be noticed without studying your audience’s various worldviews. Products and services have gotten more and more complex, so there is a lot of teaching for marketers to do. Seth Godin’s “All Marketers Tell Stories” is a step in the right direction when you want to succeed as a marketer.
Sources:
http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591841003/permissionmarket
http://digitalethos.org/a-day-at-google-new-york-opinion/
The content in this article is part of Digital Ethos’s Digital Media Education in the Higher Education Internship Program, the content was created by @KaylaMarzo, a Student at Suffolk County Community college, intern at Digital Ethos.
Branding & Marketing
What Type of Marketing Job is Right for Me?
You want to get into marketing, but aren’t sure where to start. Maybe you’ve just graduated or are looking around for an internship, but are having trouble narrowing down your options. The fact of the matter is that marketing is a vast industry, and it has many different types of careers to offer in numerous fields. The key is finding the one best suited to your particular strengths and passions.
The marketing sector can be broadly divided into five primary fields or branches. They are all interrelated and interdependent, but each is unique and all involve very different job descriptions. You can choose from careers in advertising, media, brand management, market research, and PR. Here’s what each has to offer:
Advertising
If you’ve ever seen an episode of HBO’s Mad Men, you probably have a general idea of what this work involves. Of course, it’s not nearly so glamorous or dramatic as that, but a career in advertising means becoming an expert in rhetoric, persuasion, and psychology. You’ll need to have a sharp aesthetic sense, be well versed in typography and design, and, most importantly, be able to create concise appealing images and expressions that will sell products.
Media
Technically, media falls under the blanket of advertising, but it deserves it’s own space because of the specialization it involves. While advertising, as characterized above, refers to the generation of concepts and strategies, media refers to the communication of those ideas. These jobs demand technical skill and involve getting the ad concepts circulating at maximum exposure on the Internet, television, in print, on billboards, and wherever else they will be most effective.
Brand Management
Brand Management accounts for a large part of marketing. It is also a largely conceptual field that requires an intimate understanding of a specific company and the products it sells. Brand managers must find ways to capture the essence of a company or product and translate it into a concise image, name, and marketing strategy––all while anticipating public reactions, carving out a niche market, and combating competitors.
Market Research
To sell a product, one must first understand the people it is being sold to. Market researchers conduct polls, organize focus groups, analyze statistics, recognize and anticipate consumer trends, and gain insights into the habits and psychology of the buyer.
Public Relations (PR)
Public relations jobs require strong social skills and fast-talking. PR departments are intermediaries between the media, consumers, employees, investors, and the public. They write press releases, appease angry parties, promote products, keep investors informed, and deal with journalists.
As long as products are being sold, there will be a demand for people who can market them. This is why there are so many employment opportunities in the marketing sector, and usually a strong degree of job security. Slumps in the economy rarely put marketing firms out of business. Rather, they make companies who are desperate to sell their products even more reliant on advertising and creative marketing. Hopefully this guide has helped you narrow down your options. Best of luck in finding the type of career you’ll pursue in your job hunt!
Thanks to Agency Central for contributing this guide. If you fancy your hand in any of these roles, you can find wide range of marketing recruitment agencies at AgencyCentral.co.uk.
What is Inbound Marketing? [Internship]
Inbound marketing is a way of making yourself or your company easy to find and drawing people to your website by producing content that appeals to your visitors. The term “inbound marketing” was coined in 2005 by HubSpot’s Brian Halligan because he believed that traditional marketing was becoming less effective. Inbound marketing includes content like blogs, enewsletters, and the social media network. Inbound marketing is far more favored by businesses than outbound marketing. Outbound marketing includes content such as spam, telemarketing, and fliers.
The whole concept of inbound marketing is to get the customers to find you, instead of you reaching out to them. It can be broken down into five stages. One, attract traffic; two, convert visitors to leads; three, convert leads to sales; four, turn customers into repeat higher margin customers; and five, analyze for continuous improvement. A company can attract traffic to their website by blogging, for example. Updating your blog more frequently will attract more visitors to your website and revenue traffic. Announce your website via email, and across the social media networks like Google+ and Twitter to garnish social and search traffic. Email everyone you know about your new website, lead with content and the word will travel. Share it on your social media websites. Include keywords that will draw your targeted audience in. Then, you want to make sure that the material on your page is what the visitor is looking for. Your goal is to make the visitor a customer. After your visitor becomes a customer, make sure they will come back by sending them an enewsletter and keep your page updated with things that will attract them to buy again. After you went through the four steps of the process, you want to analyze everything that you have done and make sure you are doing everything you can to satisfy your visitors, followers, customers.
In order to make inbound marketing completely effective, you want to give your customers your marketing information, and a little something else. This provides a value above and beyond what they are looking for, which creates a value to the customer experience. For example, if you’re a gardening or landscaping company, write a little side story about your home garden and how you personally take care of it in the newsletter. The three key phases are “get found, convert, and analyze”.
Inbound marketing can be effective if the communication is interactive and two-way, unlike outbound marketing which is one-way. One way to create inbound marketing is by being found on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, etc. This is a type of inbound content because someone who is looking for something specifically related to you will go directly to your page. By creating valuable content on your website, your website will rise in organic search results. By rising in organic search results, it will benefit you tremendously because the closer you are to the search engines first page, the more visibility you are gaining for your website.
You can try and get your website higher in the organic search result by pay per click (PPC). PPC is an advertising model used to direct traffic to a certain website. Every time someone’s ad is clicked, the advertiser pays the website owner or publisher. Another way to rank higher in organic search results is to make a well put together press release that is filled with information that your targeted audience will click on when they search on a search engine. Don’t use keywords that are commonly used by your competition; be more creative when it comes to keywords.
A recently new field that inbound marketing has found its way to is the social media network. Social media sites are the most visited websites on the web. When marketing on social media, identify your target audience. Once you have a targeted audience, think about keywords this audience might use to search to find sites like yours. Facebook for example, has seen a steady increase in its search bar for businesses. A basic principle of a social media site is like using a forum, if there is no activity going on you will leave. To make sure that this doesn’t happen to you on your website, fill it with lots of information and useful content. Finally, another way to use the social media network for inbound marketing is to give your “community” something to talk about. For example, if you own a fitness company and you are now selling a new workout machine, tell your social medic community. This is the “network effect”, when your community creates a “buzz” about what you were talking about, it will bring in other users.
An easy way to get information out about your business or product is to advertise where they are already going. For example, by putting “like us on Facebook” on your company’s website, this will draw people to your Facebook page where you can advertise all about your business, products and services. Another way to generate inbound marketing is to host contests. By letting your visitors and or customers take an online survey about their experience with your website, offer a chance to win a prize if they take the survey. Also give them the opportunity to go through an easy-to-do sign up for newsletters offering them coupons and sneak peeks into the future.
Inbound marketing is far more effective than outbound marketing. You can prove this just by asking if you have deleted spam mail without reading it. Spam mail is an example of outbound marketing. Since social media is huge growing field, there should be no question as to why inbound marketing is so effective. In the end, it’s all about finding a new way to generate interest, and inbound marketing is the new way to generate interest and visitors, followers, customers.
Sources:
- http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/digital-marketing/curious-needy-website-deliver/
- http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/13-tools-to-simplify-your-social-media-marketing/
- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/start/business-planning/inbound-marketing-the-customer-finds-you/article2079880/
- http://socialmediatoday.com/feldmancreative/480843/inbound-marketing-works-copywriter-s-success-story
- http://www.times-standard.com/business/ci_19898286
- http://www.pamorama.net/2012/03/31/inbound-marketing-vs-outbound-marketing-infographic/#.UFyI1I1mSGk
- http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/01/jeanne-hopkins-hubspot-interview.html
The content in this article is part of Digital Ethos’s Digital Media Education in the Higher Education Internship Program, the content was created by @KaylaMarzo, a Student at Suffolk County Community college, intern at Digital Ethos.
Over 60% of Forgotten Passwords Result in Website Abandonment
You’re logging into a website. Uh oh, what’s my username and password? Maybe it’s xyz, enter. ‘Username or password invalid’. Maybe it’s abc, enter. 
Again, ‘Username or password invalid’. Fiddlesticks. After exhausting all possible username & passwords, do you abandon the website or click ‘Forgot Password’, go into your email, retrieve the confirmation link, return to the site and reset the password only to forget it the next time. This lengthy guessing game is most unwelcome for internet users and not good for the bottom line of companies. This scenario has happened to all of us at one point in time. We were curious to know how often so we set out to better understand the frequency of forgetting usernames & passwords and the probably of site abandonment. The results to our survey are below.
Key takeaways:
- Online users have too many usernames & passwords to manage
- Online users forget passwords often leading to frustration or annoyance and possible abandonment, in other words, lost sales… shriek!!
- Social login has reached a little more than half of internet users
- Those who have used social login feel that it makes logging and sharing easy
- Almost half of internet users who have never used social login would prefer to use social login over creating a username & password
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
Every consumer centric company’s goal is to over-deliver on the consumer experience. An unexpected touch, go the extra mile, ‘wow’ the consumer. Evoking negative emotions such as frustration, worry or annoyance in the consumer can have a reverse desired effect on engagement, retention and loyalty. All pivotal elements to the bottom line. Social login eliminates the risk of abandonment, brings a website one step closer to being social with their customers and avoids users having to remember yet another password all the while collecting valuable social data.
Hallelujah! Is social login the answer?
Yes, in combination with the traditional username/password login. There will always be online users who are comfortable using username & passwords or aren’t active on social media. Offering both options is the best case scenario to eliminate all username & password issues.
Learn more about Lanoba’s social login here.
Author:
Beth Thouin is Marketing Director at @lanoba. She is unearthing social profile data and sharing influencers using social login. She loves her customers, all things social and her kids, Lucas and Eliana, the world’s best huggers.
Sources:
What Digital & Social Media Marketers Can Learn from Business Consultants [Opinion]
In the last five years I have heard some wild claims about who makes the best marketer – those claims have ranged from PR professionals, who ‘should be the only people to do it’, to Social Media, to ‘it takes a Sales Professional to provide the best internet marketing.’
I’d like you to think of Digital Assets in the form of a building:
- The windows are Social Media – transparency of course
- The walls are the advertising efforts – the place to display and show
- The doors are the PR – as media attention helps get people to walk through the door
- The shelves, displays and racks are the event planners – presentation and onsite execution
- The Roof is the website – it covers everything else
However, the missing element is the foundation or the business itself. The digital and social media industry has gotten a lot of bad heat on not being effective and I would argue that has happened because the keystone has been missing, the Business Consultant.
I warn almost everyone that I interact with to look for the red flags when meeting a PR, Web, SEO, Social Media, Event Professional, etc. The best way to know if that have any clue what they are talking about will come with the first interaction. Do they start talking to you about their business and products, or do they ask you about yours?
The world is filled with overnight talent and businesses that offer these services and I say talent because most are very good at their niche, unfortunately it seems to end there. Think of it like a great marksman sent off to war to be a sniper without any military training. The ability to hit a target does not translate to being an effect solider, especially in terms of the bigger picture.
The transformed business consultants that are working as project managers and on the rare occasion can provide Web Development, SEO, Social Media and more are carrying with them the greatest lesson the marketing industry can learn, success goes beyond the view, comment and call!
Traditional marketing and advertising was all about visibility and the connection point, the advertising was a success when the consumer connected with your name, product or service.( i.e. someone visited the website, opened the email, opened the text message or called your phone, that is marketing success in the traditional context). The ability to convert that experience into a sale was the business owners problem. This is the reason businesses fail continuously and why corporate leadership is completely in the dark with the digital environment.
How Can We do Better or Demand Better?
Take the Business Consultant approach, inquire about the business model, the products or services, why the target market is the target market. Take the campaign backwards, go from the conversion or sale to the campaigns and tools to reach consumers. Build the model on the business and remember the best in any industry become the best from exploring. Sometimes it’s easier to create new then fix broken.
Why “NO” is so important to the Profession of Digital & Social Media Marketing [Opinion]
The overnight rush of Web developers lead to overnight SEO providers and then the flood of Social Media Marketers. Which in turn lead to every PR, advertising and marketing agency claiming to offer services they knew nothing about to save their revenue streams. The industry changed so fast that quantity quickly overtook quality.
“NO” is crucial to not just the digital and social industry but the recovery of our economy! I was sitting in a session at BlogWorld, it was about monetization, each of the three presenters had the same story the “advertisers found us” and “I spent nothing on advertising”.
I had to go to the mic, this is such a common carless comment that I had an ethical obligation to set straight.
The question: “You said that advertisers found you and that you spent nothing on advertising, but I want you to think of what the cost was… you might not have purchased advertising but clearly you spent time and money to build your…”
All three faces quickly had a look that you couldn’t quite place, perhaps it was horror? Then Lou Mongello of Walt Disney World Radio jumped to answer, “Oh it was so expensive, it cost me time, I had to sell my house and I spent money on all sorts of things”.
Lou Mongello then went on to explain that part of his success came from having his families support and the understanding of sacrifice to accomplish the long term goal.
Don’t Go In Unprepared
Here is the crucial point of this article, because so many enter into digital and social media services unprepared with misrepresentation of their own business model, they are ill equipped to help their clients with the same problem. In the need to create profits they become like AOL, they leap into every adventure without any thought of their clients business model or worse their own long term business model.
Learning to say “NO” allows you to take on clients that will be successful with your talent or service, it garnishes long term revenue for your business and a reputation for growth. It’s not easy being picky in the beginning, or when times are tough, but it is successful! Even more importantly, it keeps others from wasting their life savings on an idea or business that they are underfunded, underequipped or worse ignorant about from losing their time and money. It also prevents the overwhelming false, false from becoming the digital and social media industry. The Social Media Marketer did not intentionally fail you, the web developer did not build a crappy website or fail to generate valuable SEO, the business was flawed and directed to fail from the beginning and the digital and social industry should not take the blame for that.
Pick your clients carefully, for the benefit of them, yourself and our industry.
Author:
@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.
Sources:
#140conf in New York City June 19th – 20th 2012 [Event]
This year the #140c will be hosted at the 92nd Street Y at 1395 Lexington Avenue in NYC.
The History of the #140conf
In its fourth year running, this conference has had no shortages of experts with a plethora of educational and trending information to provide attendees. Each year it simply gets better and better.
In 2009, #140conf hosted events in:
2011 found #140conf spreading even further across the globe with events held in more locations than before.
There have also been a number of #140conf Meetups which have taken place across the United States, and outside of the states including places like the UK, Kenya and Israel.
In addition, check out the writers panel from #140conf 2011 that featured Debre Eckerling from @WriteOnOnline, Jeanne V Bowerman @jeannevb and Tracey Jackson @traceyjackson4.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIIKqAJmGmE]
With many more impressive panels the 2011 #140conf was a rousing success. This year is shaping up to top them all.
Jeff Pulver Speaks
In April, 2012, Jeff Pulver shared a talk in Des Moines Iowa and he had some very compelling things to say about how we act and interact on our social networks. Are you YOU on your social networks? Are you who you think your friends and consumers think you should be? If you are anything but yourself you are not really connecting with those most important when it comes to marketing yourself or your brand. Jeff put it out there pretty well when he asked:
Are you you? Are you connecting to the person who you are? Are you true to yourself? If you Tweeted yourself would you talk back? Would you friend yourself?
I can relate to this as it is very similar to my previous article “Who are you?”
Societal communications are occurring now on a global level. Jeff reminds us that while the communication line is open, we have plenty of social media users who are more than happy to be brash, rude, insensitive, and that perhaps these people are being themselves. But we also have others who are the veritable shrinking violets, who are unlikely to ever be heard on a grand scale. And then we have our social leaders. Those whose Tweets and Status shares compel us, attract us. In most cases, those people have a strength we admire. Each of us have our own strengths when it comes to how we voice our feelings, how we communicate. In each of us is our true voice that when shared with the Twitterverse, or asserted on a Facebook status will have its own selling point, for those with a similar voice, opinions and assertions.
Inspire others whenever you can, because you can.
This Year’s #140conf NYC
The turnout for this year’s conference is expected to be attendees from 17 countries and 31 states.It is already expected to be the largest worldwide 
gather of entrepreneurs and professionals who are interested in the effects of real-time on people and businesses.
The focus will be on how the internet has the power to change lives and all attendees should expect to leave with a new outlook on how real-time interaction on the web can be used to grow your business or personal life, or even to do something intrinsically meaningful such as activism in charities you support. The options are almost endless.
The schedule is a fast paced and very unique one. It is the intention of the organizers to supply the perfect platform for as wide of a demographic as possible. Everyone is encouraged to share their thoughts or engage with attendees and speakers. Individual talks will be limited to ten minute excerpts and panel discussions will run for 10 to 15 minute sets.
Conference speakers will be arriving in NYC from all over the world. Speakers from the Pacific, South America, Europe, Asia, Canada and of course many from the United States.
Register Today to Be a Part of This Event
Interested in having your voice heard at a future #140conf event? We are always looking for new voices to introduce to our community. Just drop a note to Jeff Pulver. Interested in leveraging the influence of the #140conf NYC community? we are looking for companies interested in sponsoring this event.
The #140conf events –Tweetups, Conferences, Parties and Roadtrips – present an opportunity to consistently broaden your social media knowledge, whether for its own sake, or for application in communication, business, news, politics, philathropy or just about any other sphere. You always meet the most interesting and creative people at these events, and each time, Jeff’s mix of speakers, their topics and perspective leave you substantially more informed and meaningfully inspired.
– Ian Aronovich – @GovtAuctions
Don’t miss this years @140conf #140conf in NYC!
Author:
@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.
Sources:
Favor Facts over Frills in B2B Copywriting
Platitudes and empty promises go over like lead balloons in the B2B world, where people expect results. While emotion can often play a key role in turning prospects into leads – after all, the customer has to like you – B2B customers are visiting your site with an objective. Too much fluff can end up burying the sale. Effective copywriting delivers a message that lets customers know exactly how to meet their goals and compels them to take action.
Here are tips for persuasive B2B copywriting without the frills.
Know Your Audience
The tone, style, language and vocabulary you use depend heavily on the people who are using your site. You may have a typical clientele, but you must still narrow your audience down to the actual person who is making the online search, ending up at your website and taking action. This person could be a business owner, a product manager, a VP of marketing, a buyer, a salesperson or an assistant. Identify your users and write content that speaks to them. Using the word “you” helps you further communicate directly to your readers.
Headlines, Bullets and Menus
These areas of text may have the smallest amount of content, but they play an important role and require powerful language. Strong headlines are brief and to the point – don’t waste space with language that leaves readers wondering what the page is about. Use bullets to outline the benefits of your products or services, making it easier for users to find what they’re looking for without having to comb through heavy text. The content on your site’s menu bars must navigate users to where they should be on the site; if they get lost, they’re likely to give up and move on.
Ask Questions
Asking your users questions helps them identify their needs and even discover challenges they weren’t aware of. Just be sure to provide solutions. For example, a marketing agency that provides digital display advertising services might ask “What Makes an Ad Effective?” in its headline. This gets readers wondering if their current advertising campaign is as effective as it could be, and compels them to read on for the answer.
Call to Actions
One of the main goals of a B2B website is to convert leads into sales. A successful call to action creates a sense of urgency and value that triggers an immediate response from the user. Vague call to actions, such as “Buy now” or “Click here” lack the detail required for an appropriate response – buy what now? Click here for what? Write call to actions that have a clear, concise message: “Sign up now for a 30-day free trial!” or “Contact us today to make an appointment!”
Case Studies and Testimonials
Rather than make promises and guarantees that aren’t for certain, tell your readers about true success stories. Testimonials help to build your company’s credibility. With case studies, you can highlight specific challenges and how you worked to meet them – proving to your readers that you have the resources and expertise to walk the walk.
Do you have any other tips for B2B copywriting that really works?
Author:
Jacqui MacKenzie is a writer for Straight North, one of the leading Web development companies in Chicago that specializes in Internet marketing, social media and SEO. She writes for a wide range of clients, including audiologist website providers and companies that help book a tee time online. Check out the Straight North blog! @ straightnorth
Sources:
Real-Time Monitoring for Facebook Analytics
With new updates kicking off on Facebook left and right hopefully you haven’t missed the opportunity they have presented to take advantage of real-time monitoring of your webpage statistics and demographics. One of their newest tools is in fact, the Real-Time Monitor for Facebook analytics. Whereas before the updates seemed to arrive on an irregular basis, they have built new post level analytics that give user’s the answers they are looking for, updated, around every 5 minutes.
This has phenomenal impact for those who wanted to more closely monitor how specific posts fared, or even gauge how fans reacted to content, contest, questions and more social communication options in real-time and ask they occur. Although the new tool is currently in beta and free for Pro users, it is worth keeping an eye on for when it makes its to public release. Currently, the beta tool requires users to remain within that tool in order for them to collect the metrics and share the data in real-time, but they have plans to expand further on this functionality, hopefully with more flexibility, in the future.
What Can You Monitor with the Real-Time Tool?
You will be able to filter by a variety of metrics including, but not limited to:
- Unique Impressions
- Paid Impressions
- Total Impressions
- Organic Impressions
- Viral Impressions
- Total Engagement
- Shares, Likes, Comments, Clicks and Virality
Users will be able to monitor all of the active posts on the pages they administrate. The filter options are flexible and can be viewed as Change in Values or Total Values. This will offer marketers a unique perspective on how their content is trending in real-time.
Negative Feedback Posts
If you notice a trend that indicates an individual post is beginning to accrue more than average negative feedback, you may want to consider remove the post to help reduce damage to your average EdgeRank. This can also help your page to maintain the strongest possibility for a high-end EdgeRank.
“Virality”
Everyone knows that your content or media has a chance at going viral on a social media network. They are famous for this on a daily basis. You will now be able to view previously unseen real-time analysis of the viral lift to each piece of content you release. Users can then study how viral, organic, and paid impressions begin to interact with the content to create even further viral marketing opportunities.
Recent Posts
Users can monitor the individual performance and status of the most recent post by viewing impressions, clicks, engagement, and even negative feedback in real-time. Brand management can easily use this vital information to identify and cultivate the performance of each post to the fullest or manage damage control by pulling those negatives out quickly when needed.
Author:
@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.
Sources:
How to Budget for Marketing
Whatever it is, the budget you put in place for your marketing for the year ahead will shape the results you achieve. Now is the ideal time to define your marketing approach and the budget that will support it. In a recent Toluna survey of businesses, 40% of businesses surveyed stated that they did not feel that their marketing budget met all their marketing needs.
In tougher times, the marketing budget is often the first thing that is cut. Yet it is commonly known that companies which consistently market themselves in a recession perform better than those that don’t. So:
- How can companies budget better to create the results they want?
- What can companies do to budget effectively for the year ahead?
Fit your strategy around your target market
Strategy is everything in marketing. But a separate strategy for your marketing and your sales approach will not deliver the best Return On Investment (ROI). Now is the best time to review your marketing approach in 2011 and identify what worked – and what didn’t. Then, apply this important data to your overall sales and marketing strategy. Which markets are you trying to reach? Which audiences do you want to grow in the coming year? Match this with your marketing approach and plan your marketing spends in careful stages, so that each part of the plan flows from one stage to another. Use inbound marketing technology to track the behaviour of your target markets and ensure that you are using the most appropriate marketing channels to reach them. This will help you get more from your budget in 2012.
Track your ROI on marketing spend
Your marketing data from the past year will provide a valuable insight into what will work over the next 12 months. So carefully track the ROI you’ve gained this year and identify the activities that have created the best results.
Be ruthless in assessing what is paying you back and what is proving to be a drain on your resources
Would these areas work better with a different approach, perhaps using inbound marketing to accelerate results and make them more profitable? You can also use inbound marketing technology to closely assess and analyse the exact payback from each area of your marketing plan – and feed this knowledge into the year ahead. Put a plan in place for tracking your ROI. Inbound marketing allows you to do this continuously and consistently, letting you to adapt and refresh your marketing activities accordingly.
Create a cross-channel marketing budget
Are you currently using all the appropriate marketing channels? Did your approaches in 2011 feed across the different channels to maximise results – or did you only focus on a couple of areas?
Recent research suggests that companies using social media or “collaborative Web 2.0 technologies” are achieving higher profits. (Source: McKinsey)
Are you one of the companies missing out on a better marketing ROI by neglecting or misusing social media and other technologies?
By using inbound marketing you can connect up all your marketing channels much more effectively, making it easier to retain any potential customers – whatever stage of buying cycle they are at. You can create a cross-channel presence that reduces the cost of building a receptive and responsive brand profile. This approach also makes it much easier to budget for the year ahead. It gives you a core strategy which then feeds out across all the channels – bringing you a better ROI for 2012.
Adapt and update
While it is important to develop a clear strategy to get the best from your marketing budget, it is also important to continuously review and analyse your results. More conventional marketing approaches have traditionally made it quite hard to view the results as you go along. But new inbound marketing technology allows you to view the impact of every single aspect of your marketing approach – as it’s happening. Use this invaluable and on-going insight to adapt your strategy and ensure you make the most of your budget throughout 2012.
What is the secret to budgeting right for marketing in the year ahead?
Everybody wants to make their marketing budget work harder. So how can you ensure you do this in the months to come? Focus on your target market and what they’re doing. By using inbound marketing technology you can get closer to buyer behaviour and demand. You can use this insight to create more meaningful connections by building relationships across all the different marketing channels. This enables you to accelerate the relationships you build with your prospects. Instead of waiting for months to view the results, you can see who’s responding – and adapt your strategy to meet the demand there and then. This ensures that your marketing spend is continuously matched with where it is most effective and that it feeds right back into your company’s sales and marketing strategy. Create your strategy, use advanced inbound marketing approaches to maximise your marketing impact and assess its impact while it’s live. Keep it consistent and targeted and you can look forward to a better ROI on your marketing budget in 2012.
Author: Sookie Shuen is the community manager at Tomorrow People, a leading UK inbound marketing consultancy. You can read more of Sookie’s content on inbound marketing by subscribing to the Zoober Inbound Marketing blog here. You can also find her on Google+ and Twitter.
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Google Places for Your Service Industry
An innovative business known as PlumberSEO.net has found a way to use Google Places for service industry networking. While they specialize in 
working with HVAC contractors and Plumbers, PlumberSEO helps those in their industry take their businesses to the next level with effective online marketing with social media, SEO, map optimization and many other internet marketing tools.
Find a Plumber and More
It used to be that when you were looking for a plumber, electrician, roofer, or any other type of service contractor, you picked up the yellow pages and almost always went with the one that had the most impressive ad, the most credentials, and the most well-known company brand name. In today’s world, very few people still use this traditional method of printed resources, instead, they head to the web to look for the best options for service contractors in their area. One of the ways in which Google has made this search easier for consumers is by adding Google Places.
Check out this quick video to get familiar with Google Places if you require a bit more in-depth understanding.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpZan96KHOM]
Now when people look for service contractors in their area, they commonly head to Bing, Yahoo, Google, or other favored search engines as well as to social media sites where they may ask friends or family if they can suggest a contractor in the area.
A recent survey of 2,000 consumers revealed the 86% of the surveyed use the internet to find local business, 74% of those cited search engines as where they go when seeking a local retail or service industry contractor.
Local businesses that are not showing up on page one of search engines are missing major opportunities to grow their business as most people tend to decide their choice in contractors from page one of search engine results.
How to Manage Google Places
Google Places isn’t without its own flaws. However, most of these are user related and may just require a bit more of an in-depth understanding of how Google Places works. If you have had any issues you may want to check out this video for some helpful tips if you find you need help troubleshooting.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/user/GooglePlaces]
In addition, be sure to check out how to Optimizing Your Google Places Page to get the best results for your business.
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Author:
@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.
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