Crystal Coleman on Social Media

Meetup Recap: SVForum 2/11/13 - Magnetic Content with Barry Feldman

Since relocating to the Bay Area, I’ve really thrown myself into the local social media meetup community. I take notes (and furiously tweet) at most of the meetups, but my take-aways mostly stay there… on paper and twitter feed. At a recent meetup, I realized… I should be blogging these! I’ll be going back through the last couple months of meetups as time allows, and blogging my future ones, too. Hopefully, my readers will enjoy reading about the lessons I’ve learned at these great sessions. 

Meetup Group: SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG
Meetup Title: Magnetic Content: Transform Your Website Into a Customer Attraction Force Field
Speaker: Barry Feldman, Feldman Creative

Barry is an energetic and engaging speaker and writer who, in addition to the content on his own sites, writes for many of the major social media blogs, including Social Media Today, Social Media Examiner, CopyBlogger, and Slideshare. Chances are, if you read about content marketing regularly, you’ve read something by Barry. 

He believes that, as content marketing moves forward, there will less need for sales and more need for marketing. It makes sense, and he adds that we now “like to buy; we don’t like to be sold to.”

Barry condenses the definition of content marketing into pretty simple and accurate terms. Content Marketing is Proactively Answering Questions. And your website has to be the hub of your marketing efforts.  

Barry’s developed what he believes are 7 key steps to great, magnetic, content marketing. 

1. Define your objective - what actions you want your customers to take. 
2. Determine what the buyers need/want to know. LISTEN.
3. Create a content plan.
4. Put together a content creation team. Mix of internal and external, mix of talents (writing, video, sales, help desk).
5. Get your digital ducks in a row. 
6. Promote what you publish
7. Measure - Metrics tell you what is and is not working. 

Barry’s take away mnemonic for Magnetic Content is COM:

Compelling
Original
Memorable

You can view tweets from this event on this Storify. 
Barry’s presentation is available on Slideshare. 

Companies loved by customers grow twice faster than the country’s biggest advertisers

byronnewmedia:

Companies with Top Customer Experiences Out-Score Super Bowl Advertisers via http://usefularts.com

seanrrwilkins:

Got this email this morning from Airbnb on my way to a short SF visit for work and fun.

It’s a teaser list of meetups and some other Airbnb affiliated events around SF during my stay. It’s short, smart, and focused on providing recommendations to get out and experience the city as a traveler. I’m here for work, and to catchup with friends, so no yoga in Washington Square for me, but it’s a great idea to support the traveler and host community.

This is just a part of a larger meetup push(https://www.airbnb.com/meetup/atlas) I’ve seen in the past few months, and it’s a great evolution for Airbnb community. As a regular user, Iv’e always been impressed with the hosts, and it’s great to see the company supporting more community through these recommendations and other activities around the cities.

Really smart on AirBnB’s part… I like this strategy!

New post and instructographic from Nick Bernard:
How to Write an Effective Outreach Email

http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/outreach-email-instructographic.htm

The 6 Marketing Metrics Your CEO Actually Cares About

deancruse:

A great set of marketing metrics for the CMO to track and manage.

A good read for those of us obsessed with new ways to find ROI.

Great list of awesome Marketing Blogs

jonbarrick:

You’ll likely want to find & bookmark all of these:

Embedded from the Pardot Blog

Reblogging to remind me to go through and start reading all of the ones I don’t already follow. Great lists.

Pay with a tweet

studiojubilee:

(This story is from back in September now, but we hadn’t seen it until now, and thought you may have missed it too) 

Twitter is a fantastic tool for business. It allows retailers to promote, advertise, and drive traffic to their online shops. Some businesses frequently offer you a free download or voucher code in return for a customer tweeting about it. But this idea has been taken a step further:

Kellogg’s opened the world’s first Twitter shop in London in September. It was designed to promote a new Special K product, and instead of paying with cash, customers could get hold of a snack in return for a simple tweet about it.

“The value of positive endorsement on social media sites is beyond compare, so we’re excited to be the first company to literally use social currency instead of financial currency to launch this new product in our bespoke Special K shop”, Kellogg’s said. 

This sort of promotion proves the power of social media as a marketing tool. But moreover, it shows just one way it’s possible to embrace on and offline promotion. Today, neither will work well alone — it’s all about finding away to create a powerful campaign tailored to your business. 

So, if you’d like us to find a new way to help your business, get in touch: hello@studiojubilee.com

You can follow us on Twitter here: @studiojubilee

A few of the design websites I frequent occasionally use the “Pay With A Tweet” scheme to give away promo packages or bonus extras to orders. I’ve both used this pay structure and found out about new services via the tweets of others, so I would say it works. What do you think?

Using Pinterest for Business - Social Media Examiner

The most comprehensive article I’ve seen so far.

#5: Etiquette

Be mindful of pin etiquette as outlined by Pinterest: be nice, credit your sources, avoid self-promotion, report objectionable content and tell them how they’re doing.

Brian Honigman has some pointers regarding etiquette for brands: by sharing images and videos from other industry-related user’s boards, you will “keep your profile community-based and not just a promotion center for your assets and products. Repin and like other content that suits your community, which will help strengthen your reach in the long-term.”

#6: Focus Group

Pinterest users’ likes and interests are easily viewable for all to see. Lauren Drell points out that with millions of people using Pinterest to keep track of objects “they love, places they enjoy, foods they devour and things that inspire them” that marketers can use Pinterest as a focus group.

She suggests you look at the pinners who follow your brand and see what they’re pinning and who else they’re following. “They’re volunteering a lot of information about their interests, passions, dreams and sense of humor in a more natural way on Pinterest than they would on, say, a survey or even on Facebook, where they have to manually enter ‘sarcasm’ or ‘travel’ as an interest. Use this information to your advantage to glean insights about your target consumers.”

Five Pinterest Best Practices for Nonprofits

If your nonprofit has yet to start using Pinterest, then hopefully new data released for January 2012 illuminating that Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn combined will motivate you to start pinning – or at the very least to sign up and reserve your first choice of usernames (hint, hint!). To get started, here’s a step-by-step tutorial for nonprofits and a list of nonprofits already using Pinterest effectively.

I currently follow a little over 300 nonprofits on Pinterest (pinterest.com/nonprofitorgs). My first impression is that 20% or so instinctively get it. Their content is good. They aren’t cluttering Pinterest with boring photos and seemingly endless marketing pitches. Pinterest definitely requires more subtly and creativity to build and maintain a following. That said, for those of you ready to take your pinning to the next level, I have listed five best practices below.

The best guide I’ve seen so far for Best Pinterst Practices. Regular businesses can follow this, too!

Marketers: What Mobile Users Will and Won't Put Up With [INFOGRAPHIC] - Mashable

Young people between the ages of 18 and 24 are even more connected to their mobile devices than you might think. Nine in 10 young adults spend between one and five hours on their mobile devices daily. Nearly one in 10, meanwhile, are on their gadgets between five and ten hours each day. Just …

A good read for those working on the mobile side. Being in customers’ pockets gives you more access, but more opportunity for turning customers off, too.