Inbound Marketing Archives - Page 8 of 9

TGIF Friday Freebie The iPhone iPad Touch and more

January 28, 2011/in Branding, Building a Community, Fun, Inbound Marketing, Small Business, Social Media, Strategy, Technology, TGIF Friday Freebie

Hello everyone, I usually don’t post on Fridays, but I came across this cute story and I couldn’t resist. It doesn’t exactly fit into the Social Energizer social media plan, so I decided to make another category – TGIF Friday Freebies. A place for the real light stuff. Everyone needs ‘light’ by Friday.

I’m not able to cite the author on this, so let’s just say it’s from ‘Author Unknown’. It’s probably better that way.

It all began with an iPhone…

March was when my son celebrated his 15th birthday and I got him an iPhone.

He just loved it. Who wouldn’t?

I celebrated my birthday in July and my wife made me

very happy when she bought me an iPad.

My daughter’s birthday was in August so I got her an iPod Touch.

September came by so for my wife’s birthday I bought her an iRon.

It was around then that the fight started . . .

What my wife failed to recognize is that the iRon can be integrated into the home network with the iWash, iCook and iClean. This unfortunately activated the iNag app.

Which led me to the iHospital and iGet out Fr iDay.

_________________________________________

This article has been brought to you by SocialEnergizer.com

INBOUND MARKETING & MARKETING TECHNOLOGY OPTIMIZATION

Social Energizer’s purpose is to help companies develop lasting relationships with their customers and increase their conversion rates by adding proven online marketing techniques to their marketing mix.

We do this by integrating inbound marketing techniques into each businesses’ current marketing plan and by utilizing digital channels and strategies like Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, and Web-integrated Email Campaigns.

Please sign up to automatically receive our blog using the subscribe button. We invite you to comment and rate each blog, so we can ever improve our offerings to you.

Thanks for visiting! – Lynn

Dispatches from Blogistan, A Book Review

January 25, 2011/in Blogging, Building a Community, Buyer Persona, Content Management, Inbound Marketing, Lead Generation - Nurturing, Search Engines, Social Media

Described in the subtitle as “a travel guide for the modern blogger,” Suzanne Stefanac’s book, Dispatches from Blogistan, is worth reading whether you are a blogger or not. This is not so much a how-to book as it is a why-to-blog book.

The first two chapters offer a new take on the history of communications. And the book really begins with the introduction of the internet as radicalizing the way communications occur. Instead of pushing messages (from advertising to propaganda), the shift is to pull the audience to the message. Instead of one-to-many or one-to-one channels of communication, the shift is toward many-to-many channels. The blogosphere is the heart of the many-to-many messages.

Stefanac provides a layout of the landscape in her explanation of the blogosphere. Even though the book was published in 2007(by New Riders in Berkeley) and some things have changed, her insights into the culture still ring true. Technorati is no longer the only major search engine for blogs, for example. Google, Yahoo, Bing and most others now include blogs in their search engine results. Such changes confirm how spot-on Stefanac is about the democratization of media.

With a common sensical approach she addresses issues of trust, privacy, security, and legal safeguards. Yet its reading about the power of collaborative discourse — many-to-many conversations — that gets to the heart of blogging.

There are so many basics to blogging covered in this book I can highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand this new social media phenomena. People all over the world upload more than a million new blog posts every day. Every day.

News blogs are written by citizen journalists and professional reporters. Food blogs by farmers, grocery stores, chefs, home cooks, foodies, gardeners, and upscale food magazines, food manufacturers, product advertisers, etc.

Blogs as diaries. Blogs as clubhouses. Blogs as news feeds. Blogs as soapboxes.

Stefanac takes the blogger on a road tour. She gives the reader driving instructions but most importantly takes them under the hood of the car to explain how the search engines work. And how to check our own fluids, tire pressure and lights. It’s a handy desk reference for a seasoned blogger and a wonderful place to start for someone who is new to blogging.

Blogging has never been easier. WordPress makes it the easiest.

U.S. Army Launches Social Media Handbook

January 21, 2011/in Blogging, Business Management, Content Management, Inbound Marketing, Social Media, Strategy

Just a short post this morning. I found this interesting from our friends at Mashable. It’s a story of how the Army has created and is distributing a handbook to all army personnel and their families on how to handle social media.

Mashable says that, “The new social media handbook provides additional tips and best practices, along with information on operations security tips, branding information, checklists, regulations and frequently asked questions.”

I bet they would have liked to have had this before WikiLeaks came into existence.

Chris Brogans- What is the Focus and Purpose of Your Blog

January 20, 2011/in B2B, Blogging, Building a Community, Business Management, Content Management, Google, Inbound Marketing, Search Engines, SEO, Small Business, Social Media, Strategy, Websites, Yahoo

I was digging through some of my archives and came across this article from Chris Brogan, one of my favorite thought leaders in the social media arena. It is about the focus and purpose of your blog.

Chris starts by suggesting that you, “Ask yourself that question: what is the focus and the purpose of my blog? Is the purpose of your blog easy to define? What are you aiming towards accomplishing with it? How are you testing whether or not you’re reaching your desired effect?”

Next, he tells the story of his blog history and brings you up to date.

“When I started my blog many years ago (it skittered across several domains before I landed in “real” blog software), it was for fiction. I wrote stories. Then, I wrote about fitness and nutrition. Then, I wrote about self-improvement. Then, I wrote about new media. I went from that into writing about social networks and social media, and then eventually, I moved into how businesses could use social media to improve.

What am I writing about these days? Human business. It’s essentially the idea that relationships and human-shaped experiences serve business much better than cold marketing and afterthought customer service.”

Human business, now that’s an idea that can catch on. At Social Energizer, our philosophy is based on this same principle. Finally, Chris helps you define what it is that you need to do.

“Your blog is a media property. It’s also a tool that allows you to build relationships (should that be of interest), to notify and inform (if you like telling the news), to reflect and react (if you like being a commentator), to report (if that’s something you enjoy doing), or a tool to educate, instruct, or establish thought leadership. It can be a call to action, a lead generator, a showcase for your talents, and many other things.

But your community (or your audience, if you’re not as close to them) is there with an expectation. They are seeking whatever it is you’ve been offering along the way. They want your best, and they want your material to enlighten, entertain, inform, inspire, or any of several other functions.”

One thing Chris doesn’t mention in his article is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Sometimes gaining better SEO can be the main purpose for writing a blog. Consistently changing content on your website will affect your search rankings with the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! And Bing. Initially, I think small business owners care more that customers find their websites, then that they are ‘engaging’ with them. It’s sort of the chicken and the egg thing.

What is the focus and purpose of your blog? If you need help defining it and applying it? Give Social Energizer a call. Our focus is on small businesses. Our purpose is to help integrate inbound marketing techniques into our clients’ current marketing plans.

Online FREE, the new Tchochtke

January 18, 2011/in B2B, B2C, Branding, Building a Community, Business Management, Content Management, Inbound Marketing, Lead Generation - Nurturing, Small Business, Social Media, Strategy, Trends

To view video, click on link below

Henry Ford once said, “The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.” In today’s inbound marketing terms, this could be the new Holy Grail. Business owners successful at providing the right balance of online FREE content and services are most likely to entice and solidify their customers. This strategy is called a pull strategy and means you are pulling customers, not pushing them to buy your product or service.

Yes, I said FREE content and services. Free, as in no cost. Zip, Zilch, Nada, No dinaro. You all know where I’m going with this, don’t you? Here’s my short list:

Facebook
Twitter
Linked In
Google
Yahoo
YouTube
WordPress.com
Yelp
Webinars
e-books
surveys
data charts
content (blogs)
Farmville
Mafia Wars

You get the idea. In 2011 terms, they’re the new tchotchke.

We spend countless hours online; checking this, reading that, playing those favorite free games and watching dog-vs-man-danceoff.htm.

It’s easy to understand why WE do this, but why are THEY, a.k.a. businesses, doing it? Why is this happening? Why would businesses give it all away for free?

It’s all in the Pull Strategy

As businesses move from Old School marketing methods like advertising to Inbound Marketing there is a change from push to pull. Instead of pushing a message, social media can pull customers to your business. The heart of this new successful strategy focuses on understanding the behaviors of today’s consumer. The online world is being developed as a “warm and fuzzy” place where businesses offer free advice, content, services, and games; and come together in a sense of community. It is where people go first for consumer information, and increasingly where they make a purchase, and begin to advocate for a product, service, business, or brand they like.

This pull strategy proves to be much more effective than the traditional push approach. Why? Because who doesn’t like free stuff?

How about you? You can continue to receive this blog FREE by clicking on ‘By Email’ in the top right corner of this page and subscribing to the Social Energizer blog. Feedburner will have you decode a scrambled word and then click on a link they send to your email. That’s all there is to it.

Know Your Customer’s Customer

January 5, 2011/in B2B, B2C, Blogging, Building a Community, Business Management, Buyer Persona, Inbound Marketing, Lead Generation - Nurturing, New Media, Social Media, Strategy

Attribution to Christine Jump (Flickr)

One of the basic principles of customer satisfaction is to understand and know your customer’s customer. It is something so simple, and yet sometimes, marketing professionals overlook this. Instead they create campaigns that fit the marketing person’s profile or fancy better than they do the customer or the customer’s customer.

Whether you’re selling to a company that makes and sells stuff or selling to Moms whose main customers are her three kids, you need to recognize who the customer’s customer is. If you want to create compelling programs and assess if they are on target, then knowing your customer’s customer is the most important key to successful marketing.

Clients, the ones who pay you directly, gain a new appreciation for the professionals who do their homework in this manner. It is the most generous compliment for a client to discover that you, in fact, took the time and effort to understand what they are doing and most of all, who they are doing it for: their customers.

In online marketing terms, the customer’s customer is an extension of a Buyer Persona. As social media marketing becomes more integral to the sales process, you will see this become more critical, but I wonder how many will really ‘get it’. Relating to people, even those called consumers, is not a science, but an art, backed by a strong genuine interest in helping people and truly satisfying their wishes.

As we take up the challenge of determining how to align with customers using new media, we need to reclaim the basics we learned so long ago. Learn about your customer’s customer, get to know them, spend some time talking to them or better yet, joking and laughing with them. As you build this awareness, you also build awareness of the direction your business should take to better connect with your consumer and satisfy their needs and interests for your products and/or services. Doing this well results in relationships that can last a lifetime.

10 Easy Tips for Better Blogging

December 28, 2010/in B2B, B2C, Blogging, Building a Community, Content Management, Inbound Marketing, Lead Generation - Nurturing, Social Media

Crunch time? Does it always seem like you are wondering what to write? How do you build buzz needed to pull people to your site? Here are 10 Easy Tips for Better Blogging.

No doubt about it, blogging takes time and dedication. The pay-off comes when you find a good-size community that interacts with your site regularly and when you notice your website and blog are steadily gaining in the battle of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) rankings.

Here are ten tips that can help keep copy flowing smoothly.

Write an article that is easy to read and over 300 words long. Find at least 2 images that fit with your topic.
Pick topics that focus on things your customers often ask or are interested in. Keep a blog calendar that shows what you’ve posted and in which categories. Use it as a quick reference to keep your blog balanced
Use the scheduling tool, like this wordpress example, to automate posting at consistent days and times
Use an RSS feed to bring news that you can use as material for creating your blog
Going to an event? Shoot a video, interview some folks, and post on your blog
Interview customers for your blog
Grab some company data and turn it into an interesting story
Share a lesson you’ve learned
Save interesting emails and use for blog fodder
Use your signature line, with your blog’s link, in forums you visit to entice people to your site
Use these easy tips to keep your ideas fresh and your content flowing

Still need help with your blog? Even with these tips, do you find the whole thing overwhelming? Maybe you need help getting your site up and running. Give me a call. We have affordable plans that will fit into every Social Media budget.

(updated Dec 2014)

10 Steps to a New Business

December 23, 2010/in B2B, B2C, Branding, Business Management, Inbound Marketing, Social Media, Strategy

Have you dreamed of owning your own business, but don’t know where to start? Have you started planning for your new business, but keep wondering if you’ve forgotten anything important? Check out the basic steps below to be sure you’re on the right track.

Evaluate and Develop Your Business Concept

1. Do you feel passionate about this idea? Will it be something you can do every day –- and night?

2. Jot out a quick break-even analysis. Can you make money at what you’re planning to do?

3. Figure out how you can pay for it, until it pays for itself and then makes money. Determine best and worst case scenarios.

Structure Your Business

4. What type of business will you form?

Sole proprietorship
Partnership
LLC
C Corporation
S Corporation

5. Who will be your key employees, partners and vendors? What value do they add that you don’t have?

Brand It

6. Determine the name of your business. Start with a brainstorm session, then research your top 5-10 names for trademark and online domain availability.

7. Register your name and trademarks.

8. Determine your brand identity. If your brand were a person, who would it be? What does it stand for? How does it speak? Your brand is more than your logo and name, by answering these questions, and more, you will begin to identify your brand and its persona.

Set Up Your Business Systems

9. Obtain Insurance. Determine what liabilities are most relevant and insure for them.

10. Set Up Your Books. Find an accountant or bookkeeper that can periodically check your business situation, methods and prepare your taxes.

There’s more, but these are the top ten things that need to happen, to give your business a sound start. This is a basic list, but you would be surprised at how many people, and companies, skip some or all of these steps.

If you find yourself overwhelmed, give me a call. Many of these steps can be readily achieved and will build the foundation for a strong business. Your strong business.

Even Santa likes Social Media

December 21, 2010/in B2C, Building a Community, Content Management, e-Commerce, Fun, Inbound Marketing, Lead Generation - Nurturing, New Media, Social Media, Trends, Websites

It’s got to be good if Santa likes it. The phenomenon of social media continues into a Christmas-decorated living room near you. Social media are now part of celebrating Santa’s annual visit to children near and far.

Mashable has just posted “9 Ways to Connect With Santa on the Web” so kids can get in touch with Old Saint Nick. Services range from Santa emails to tracking his sleigh in the skies as he delivers presents around the globe. It’s just one more instance of how Social Media pervades our private lives and provides businesses with ways of engaging their customers.

In the true spirit of Christmas giving, most of these services are free and can be found at http://www.emailSanta.com/.

And what do you give in exchange? Your gift is personal contact information and permission to market to you and your little ones.

YouTube Rewind 2010 – The Top 10 List in Links

December 17, 2010/in B2B, B2C, Branding, Building a Community, Fun, Inbound Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Trends

Here’s the top watched YouTube video mashup from this year. There is no doubt about the power of video in social media… and it’s fun, too.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFnXm6cjGwU&w=640&h=390]

Could your video go viral?

Viral videos are what many business people dream of when beginning their Inbound Marketing strategy, sometimes with unrealistic expectations. Ensuring that a video of yours goes viral is impossible, but understanding their makeup, allows you to set it up for the possibility. By their nature, viral videos follow the pattern of a rapid increase of views, a couple of days with a very high number of views, and then a gentle decrease that can generate many daily views for a long period of time. Not surprisingly, the comments on these videos run pretty much the same pattern, engaging people at very high levels.

In case, you missed any of these during the year, pick a link to follow the full version now. My favorite is “This Too Shall Pass OK Go”. I love Rube Goldberg machines even more than the Old Spice guy.

Top 10 (in order, by most watched)

#1: Bed Intruder Song – http://bit.ly/hM9GKI
#2: Tik Tok Kesha Parody – http://bit.ly/gGkGDE
#3: Greyson Chance ‘Paparazzi’ – http://bit.ly/gDDvut
#4: Annoying Orange Wazzup – http://bit.ly/hBT1cm
#5: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (Old Spice)- http://bit.ly/dDXy35
#6: Giant Double Rainbow – http://bit.ly/hpKOQo
#7: This Too Shall Pass OK Go – http://bit.ly/gdMRgr
#8: The Twilight Saga Eclipse Trailer – http://bit.ly/fEq0iG
#9: Jimmy Surprises Bieber Fan – http://bit.ly/i4QqGH
#10: Gymkhana Three, Part 2 – http://bit.ly/gnBZws

Top 10 (in order, by appearance in the mashup)

• The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (Old Spice)- http://bit.ly/dDXy35
• Giant Double Rainbow – http://bit.ly/hpKOQ
• The Twilight Saga Eclipse Trailer – http://bit.ly/fEq0iG
• Jimmy Surprises Bieber Fan – http://bit.ly/i4QqGH
• Gymkhana Three, Part 2 – http://bit.ly/gnBZws
• Annoying Orange Wazzup – http://bit.ly/hBT1cm
• Bed Intruder Song – http://bit.ly/hM9GKI
• Tik Tok Kesha Parody – http://bit.ly/gGkGDE
• Greyson Chance ‘Paparazzi’ – http://bit.ly/gDDvut
• This Too Shall Pass OK Go – http://bit.ly/gdMRgr

Do videos fit into your marketing mix? Give me a call to find out if they could.