Awesome, lovely superb…. just finding which social media sites exist today is hard but having to chase round and research available ‘names’ on each one for a new client – time consuming.
Thank heavens for the wonderful people at NameChk.com
They do the grunt for you.
Now all I need is to go register the name…. there’s a handy text download file option that gives you the URL you could get for each one.
Just don’t expect me to know what they all do!
NameCheck social media name availability
We know as well as the next guy that to say there is a lot on the web on maximizing keywords within web pages is an understatement. We do a lot of reading and a lot of testing and have sorted the rubbish from the useful tips for our own resources. And we’re going to share the secrets with you. Here is our keywords list that we use for our own company, along with free tools, so you can check and perfect your work.
How to use Keywords in text
Follow this list but don’t overdo it! The sophistication in google’s crawlers mark a fine line between good content and spam. Overusing keywords will put you into the latter category.
- Primary keywords should be in text 3-6 times (depending on page length)
- Keywords should be in bold or italics where possible – (be sensitive to this one)
- Keywords should be reiterated in SEO tags
- Keywords should be used in the headline (find a balance between a snappy journalistic headline and something utterly searchable)
- Keywords should be used in page title
- Keywords should be used as sub headings in H2 format where possible
The key is in readability, you need to make sure that your page reads as a printed page would, meaning don’t get too carried away with any of the above steps when it comes to page content. There needs to be an effortless flow between page content and keywords, and using bold/italics/H2 should be thought of as journalistic punctuation for key points over keyword highlighting.
Tools
SEO book has fantastic free tools for checking and perfecting your keyword work. Visit the site and download the SEO toolbar. They walk you through how to use it with a short video tutorial. We’ve found the X-ray function to be exceptionally useful- you can visit any web page and get a list of keywords that google is picking up. From there you can alter your page text or SEO tags to pick up the correct keywords. Just change the keywords in your page and keep clicking the X-ray feature until you find the correct combination. Simple as that.
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When new staffers and interns begin work here at Creative Agency towers we have two problems
- New staff is nice – new energies and ideas and enthusiasms.
- New staff is not nice – lost knowledge, experience and expertise in that client.
So how to make the best of the staff-handover process?
The best way to start is to make a LIST. I love lists – they are fabulous for grabbing quick ideas, capturing them fast so that you can review the whole lot later but get on with your job right now.
[check out digital list-making tools plus Stickies and ListPro for iPhone]
From my list, I went over the core sections of the job including
- basic office processes – timesheet, email, filing, document name conventions, phone
- marketing collateral – where it is, what’s there, finding logos
- website and blog content [this is HUGE] – how to search, which key posts to read
- procedures for social media – answering enquiries, help questions,
- client documentation – contract, updates, meeting records
And what was interesting was that once we had the heading categories thought out – the rest of the task of debriefing one staff member (sad to see you go Mohit – but he got a great job) and re-briefing a new one (welcome Eliana, Chrissie, Matt and Mikaela) was simplified.
If you are doing content marketing for your clients – having this as part of your staff training or quarterly update meetings can be invaluable.
Content Audits
These are the big, grown up version of what we did briefing a new team member.
Knowing what information you have in your marketing collateral and how they can be used by the sales team is an important part of ensuring the two teams work well together and that content collateral actually gets used.
Emily Mayfield has written a great piece about how she first aligned the buyer persona and the steps in the buying process so that when she came to categorise the marketing materials they each lined up with clear sales methodologies already in use at her organisation. Smart.
Jeffrey Veen has a screen grab from his audit spreadsheet template plus some helpful definitions.
Hilary Marsh has added some really helpful tips like get a second screen, block out distractions, use keyboard shortcuts and have a programmable mouse.
Is automation possible?
There are some automatic tools like Sitemap Generator or iGooMap you can use to create an XML site map of your website. Use this to populate your spreadsheet for the audit. But remember, some of your content may not be online or accessible so it’s not a perfect list of everything.
The sort answer is No. You can’t automate because the expert human eye for categorisation and analysis is indispensible. But as JeffreyVeen says
]]>The best we’ve been able to do is enlist the help of a programmer to write us a script that will crawl a Web site and spit out the URLs it finds. And that merely ensures that we don’t miss any pages.The best we’ve been able to do is enlist the help of a programmer to write us a script that will crawl a Web site and spit out the URLs it finds. And that merely ensures that we don’t miss any pages.
Image via Wikipedia
Reading the rules the IOC is imposing on athletes competing at London 2012, makes me cry out loud. IOC, STOP and THINK. You are potentially challenging the largest consumer-powered communication engine to a fight to the death and I think I know who’ll win.
What is social media best known for – quick updates and fast thinking sound bites. Here’s what people accredited for the Games can do “…postings, blogs or tweets should be in a first-person, diary type format and should not be in the role of a journalist – i.e. they must not report on competition or comment on the activities of other participants or accredited persons.”
So I can say what I’m doing but not that I just beat someone else or noticed them eating, breathing or taking off an (unbranded) shirt.
All sounds unworkable and just too onerous – except that the threat of being chucked out and de-accredited may mean athletes decide just not to do any social media at all to be on the safe side.
As one commentator, Chris Matyszczyk, says
…the IOC might not yet understand the instant impulses that tweeting engenders. You grab your phone. You cradle your laptop. Out pop words whose speed is that of a Usain Bolt from the blue.
The long history of regulation and control of the Olympic branding and logo is well known (A client of ours, Rowperfect even got a “cease and desist” letter in 2000 for using a photo of an athlete in GB kit and mentioning that they trained using their product).
So the rules include the statement “Participants and other accredited persons must not use the Olympic Symbol – i.e. the five interlocking rings used alone on their postings, blogs or tweets on any social media platforms or on any websites.” You also can’t create a website with the word olympic in the URL but can create a sub-page like rowperfect.co.uk/olympics – for the duration of the games….till 15th August 2012. What’s the point? Make and leave a legacy not create and take down.
And above all there’s full personal legal liability AND the Games police will be watching from the Olympic offices www.olympicgamesmonitoring.com password protected and restricted access.
Read the full IOC Social Media Internet and blogging guidelines.
So you’ve written an e-book and are wondering why people haven’t tracked you down, overloaded your inbox with emails and the news of your book hasn’t spread the online world like wildfire. Well, the internet is a vast place, and you’ve got to make it easy to be found. We recently did the marketing for our client, Norman Evans, who created a great e-book titled ‘Becoming an Entrepreneur’. Below we share the secrets of marketing that we use for our own clients.
- Become a force to be reckoned with. AKA, get found. Hopefully, you have a website and you can add a blog section to it. If not, start a blog to develop a reader-base. Start writing about your area of expertise, and get the word out that you know what you’re talking about. The power of the internet lies in getting found. If you create a reader-base first, your e-book is going to sell much better. It’s all based on generating high quality content on your website, and helping people find you. You can also start a newsletter to keep track of any followers. Give them an incentive to join, by offering them special tips over time, or discounts on your products.
- Get in on the conversation. During your morning coffee, make it a habit to do a daily search on relevant content being published on other’s blogs. Read what other people have to say and contribute to the conversation. If you have something good to offer people will start searching for your name, and your own blog will come up. This is not blatant marketing, mind you. Don’t scrawl your blog site all over everyone else’s blogs in flashing letters—nobody likes that. Simply contribute to other people’s conversations in the areas of your expertise, and traffic will come to you.
- Tweet about it. Number 2 flows right into number 3 here. You already know who has good blogs out there and you’ve joined in on the conversations, now, share the gold! Tweet about those great blogs you’ve found and show that you know what great content is, even if it isn’t your own. The authors of these blogs will see that you’re linking to them, and then take a look at your blog. If they see you know your stuff, they’ll link back to you too. Do the same with Facebook, LinkedIn and any other relevant social media sites.
- Listing the book. Selling your book through a variety of websites is key. It’s this simple: the more hooks in the water, the easier it is to catch a fish. Using sites such as Amazon, Fishpond and Barnes and Noble will open you up to a bigger audience. It will also create links to a highly ranked website. In addition you can sell directly from your own website (now that you have one!).
- A discount for the loyal followers. By this time you have established a following that you are hopefully able to track, perhaps you have Facebook fans, Twitter followers, newsletter subscribers, etc. Just before your book is released offer your loyal followers a limited time ‘buy early’ discount, to get the ball rolling on sales. This also encourages more people to become your fan, or subscribe to your newsletter, etc. They get special offers from it, and honestly, who doesn’t love a discount.
Remember, like most things, persistence pays off… it may take weeks or months to get the audience and the traction that your book deserves, but keep going and little-and-often will definitely get you noticed.
We have 5 free E-books by Norman Evans to give away. Please contact us if you would like to be one of the lucky recipients! This is actually true, so hurry and send us your details and see if you get to read ‘Becoming an Entrepreneur’ for free!
Now, get out there and market your e-book and let us know how it goes!
This is part 2 of a 2 part blog post, showing a case study for a sporting brand client. This case study highlights the importance and success of content marketing for smaller businesses.
Client: Coxmate
Industry: Rowing Equipment
Date: 2011 – January – ongoing
Summary: Content Marketing, Newsletter management, trade shows, athlete endorsement
Coxmate is a producer and supplier of advanced electronics for Rowers, including the SX, HC and SRT. Coxmate is based in Adelaide, Australia and is owned and operated by Peter Hodson. The main competition for Coxmate is Nielsen Kellerman, an American based brand who makes the Coxbox which has the majority of the market share.
When Creative Agency Secrets started working with the client, it had a limited online presence, which included a website with online store, and a strictly product based occasional news feed. There were no regular newsletter or blog posts or social networking presence.
Marketing execution – Coxmate Ambassadors
Coxmate Ambassadors is a programme which sees high level coxswains endorse the Coxmate brand by wearing Coxmate gear and using Coxmate equipment in training and at competitions.
This idea came about through conversations started using twitter with high level coxswains and has reached a point where two of the top female coxswains in the world (USA and UK) now use and endorse Coxmate.
We would like to extend this programme to a point where we have male and female coxswain ambassadors at an international, national, and regional level of competition.
Marketing execution – Event Trade Stands
Since we started working with the client, Coxmate has set up trade stands at 3 major events on the rowing calendar in Australia and New Zealand. At each of these events, we have run a special promotion on one of the Coxmate products (SX), in which any athlete competing at the event is able to borrow an SX unit for their race and when they return it, they will be given a print out of their race graph. We have found this to a very successful promotion, with several SX units being purchased after the trials and we have also seen a lot of interest in the race graphs, which themselves become content for the Coxmate blog/news page.
Outcomes
The content marketing strategy has worked well for this client. The Coxmate products have features that are the best on the market, but the brand was relatively unknown when we started work with them. By creating content on the Coxmate products, the brand and re-posting interesting content about the sport we have lifted the brands profile on the international stage.
This has also been an effective low cost way of competing with the client’s main competition, who appear to have an unlimited advertising budget. Content Marketing has allowed us to grow our clients’ email subscription list, fan base, and get two high profile athletes on board with product endorsement.
The work continues.
Related articles
- Tech PR: What Content Marketing Might Learn from the History of Email (crawfordpr.com)
- Content Marketing needs to become Target Content Marketing (leadsexplorer.com)
Image by rebeccacaroe2000 via Flickr
Listening to Guy Kawasaki promoting his new book, he gave away some great suggestions about how B2B marketers should use Twitter for online marketing success.
Twitter has changed: it is not the same as Facebook or Linked In.
When using third party tools like this it’s important to review how the market is using them. Over time, the rules of engagement change for many niches and groups. You may find that, like us, early-day bloggers pretty much welcomed any approach from a brand or another blogger asking for a guest post or a link.
No more. The rules changed as the market got more crowded and so now if you want to approach a blogger, you have to behave differently.
So what are the new guidelines for tweeting B2B success?
- Review the sites you follow – are they push-out only tweeters? This means they only send out messages and do not respond to inbound DMs or @ replies. Many A-listers such as @holykaw @digg @techcrunch @boingboing fit this category. If they are push-out tweeters don’t bother to contact them.
- Decide on a policy for yourself and your brand. Push-out or Two-way? Most small businesses should choose the latter.
- If your account is handled by more than one person: agree the rules for Two-way responses: who does them? how are conversations checked for consistency?
- Twitter is not the same as other social media sites. It is THE place to share links. Share a ratio of at least 3 links from others to 1 link from yourself. Guy Kawasaki says he shares 10 links from others to every one of his own.
- Don’t bother the A-listers with your content [Twitter is not a PR press release engine]. If you can create content that has buzz, the A-listers will find you.
Now, this last point is the most important of them all.
Buy Enchantment [affiliate link]
Imagine a world in which brands tell the truth, advertisers act like publishers and all communication is real-time. Is this world possible? #brandjo
- Kyle Monson – Editor JWT
- Brian Clark – President of GMD Studios
- Bob Garfield – Advertising Age
- David Eastman – CRO JWT North America
- Shiv Singh – Head of digital, Pepsico
Eastman: Everyone understand the brand bit – the journalism is an editorial approach to brand buildling – thinking engagement and transparency over messaging and control. It’s a non-fiction attempt at advertising which people would rather engage with. From an agency point of view it’s about thinking as publishers rather than marketers.
Clark: I think everyone would prefer advertising to be like content rather than the other way round.
Monson: Been a journalist for 6 years. We are making journalists more relevant rather than less because this skill of publishing is more relevant than ever.
Garfield – the marketing maven part of me says ‘interesting’ and the journalist in me makes me want to punch you in the face.
Singh – this is a clear imperative. Important. The definition is all about real time marketing – as life happens.
This is a JWT event…. demonstrate your bona fides.
Monson: Who’s doing good stuff? MacDonalds 5 years ago. Mormon.org is running – turning their brand over to church members to say why they are members of the Mormon church in video. They aren’t editing it at all just deciding whether to run or not run. Representing the brand to the world.
Clark: MacDonalds took a PR agency solution the Moms programme. They took 8 mothers to where they grow the potatoes all on video. ”the mom says they use real eggs?” This is custom publishing (a print industry) this has been around for years and has been created using the same process. [interesting....I disagree] The process how a brand and a content editor can work together is ‘muscle memory’ and can happen.
Singh: We compete with everything else for consumers’ attention we have to act and think the way someone who is writing a status update does. We can’t just launch something about co-creation – it has no resonance or meaning for consumers or us. If it’s not aligned with our values it has no meaning. It’s about the resonsnce between our brand essence and values and where they meet together.
Eastman: The bigger picture is everything is becoming digital and becoming media and when everything is media it’s becoming marketing. When everything is marketing how should brands and agencies behave with each other?
Garfield: Advertising goals are awareness and persuasion. In Social Media the goals are credibility and trust. How do you forge a relationship around sugar water?
Singh: None of us have a deep relationship with this building. Our relationship is with SXSW which is at the Austin Convention Centre. With Pepsi the relationship is with the brand, it’s often the moment and what the drink evokes. Goes beyond the product itself. The Pepsi Refresh Project – we gave away $20m to good causes. This wasn’t philanthropy budget but marketing.
We saw a lift in persuastion, brand health, brand equity. People who voted / participated formed a closer relationship. We are scaling it up for 2011 because it worked for us.
Clark: Ford Bold Moves was part-documentary enabling film crews to access new places like board meetings, plants being closed and part-journalism they agreed not to edit what the journalists wrote. Point, counter-point articles. Debate about what Ford should do to turn the corner. Because we let them say what they believed, they were willing to work with Ford. Ford uses a lot more real people, informal tone of voice, got away from “sheet metal porn” and into more real stuff. This can still be seen today.
Monson: Aggregation is hard – pulling in negative news stories is a hard nut to get clients to agree to. We’ve got Microsoft to hire freelance journalists and publish things that MS doesn’t agree with – they post a response post to these articles.
Clark: I disagree – third party content exists already – why are we still talking about bad things on the internet being an issue? It’s here. don’t be afraid of something that isn’t a glowing testimonial. A good review should be showcased. 80% might be as good as you’re going to get.
Singh: That misses the point. If I publish 25% of my content that’s bad about my brand just to show I’m transparent it is inward looking even if consumers think we ‘get it’. I think it’s about adding value to consumers’ lives – the 183,000 ideas submitted gives us insight into what matters to people in the country today. This is an example of doing something new but adds value.
Garfield: Chrysler “I find it’s ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity but nobody knows how to f** drive!” The employee got fired from the social media agency. This is a pretty good line about Detroit. Does highlight how vulnerable a brand can be – careless candour, morbid humour, maligned conduct. How to reconcile the control freakdom of brand management versus individuality of social media.
Singh: It was by the PR agency – they got fired as an agency by Chrysler. If we as brands want to take brand journalism seriously the jounalists need to be part of your organisation and they know brand values. Chrysler didn’t have an employee tweeting on their behalf – if he’d been an employee he might have said the same thing and he shouldn’t have been fired. They should have taken this opportunity to fix the driving issues in Detroit.
Eastmen: without the word f*** it is a perfectly acceptable sentiment. Doesn’t this say more about the reaction from Chrysler – they look slightly foolish for having over-reacted. Not particularly smart.
Monson: It’s a Public Relations thing – this is a tweet that the public actually related to and they fired the guy for it.
Singh: To think that in social media a brand can have a big fat anonymous voice [is wrong]. A tweet error mistake hapens. we know our executives also make errors. We’re all human.
Garfield: The guy should have gotten a raise. The tweet is about the community – it made a human connection. Are we engaging as people or as brand messangers?
Singh: if Chrysler had their other 300k employees tweeting about what they think about driving in Detroit that would have been authentic about the brand and the city.
Eastman: in 1990 Iraq invaded Saudi Arabia and they managed to keep it secret from the populace of Saudis – now the social media transparency makes that impossible.
Monson: employee social media policies. Write as if your boss isn’t reading over your shoulder. As consumers we are very good at avoiding advertising.
Eastman: Should a cereal have a twitter account?
Monson: but who are the 1100 followers? Are they relevant to the brand? [these guys never work in a niche].
Singh: I don’t think the number of followers are a measure of active engagement. I think we all need to ask Twitter and Facebook to move away from followers as the core metric. But daily engagement or active engagement gives much more value. Can they improve the public metrics?
Monson: is there a direct relation between attention and quality of writing. The Internet is tooled to respond to ‘awesome’ not to respond to quality and it could be terrible.
Eastman: there’s a backlash beginning with un-friending happening.
Q&A
Schwartzkopf new home page is all focused on content (Oscars hair styles) all produced by Conde Nast editors. After 4 weeks we have 10x more usage. Is it the wrong idea to employ journalists in agencies?
Clark: Use custom publishers, second bring someone in-house to cross fertilise to colleagues; or freelance writers. Brands can do the same thing.
TimeWarnerCable Blogger – what’s the best way to teach people storytelling skills that doesn’t just say ‘this sucks’?
Monson: Are you doing conversation monitoring? Pick up themes and how you turn those into contents that can draft off what your readers are talking about. You need a mix of proactive and reactive content. You guys have gotten involved with me when I was in despair from my twitter feed. You encourage me to complain by responding to me. Is this a good idea?
Singh: One role of customer journalist and social media can’t be merged. The training for customer journalist is not the same as customer support. Acknowledge the differences.
Garfield: I disagree the public sees one brand, Pepsi not separate job titles.
We’ve been takling about content creation not about journalism “non-fiction” content by brands.
Monson: I agree. What about non-fiction narrative as a definition of journalism.
Clark: if done right you are holding up a lens to show what’s happening in the world. Ad agencies put vaseline on the lens andgetting them to buy in is a key change.
Eastman: we are talking about agencies and brands doing things in a different way – agency hire different skills. Ultimately what you call it doesn’t’ matter. We know there’s an interest in doing this. Clients think they can do it themselves. When we talk about editorial calendars, real time responsiveness, the implications of legal then they realise they need an agency.
Related articles
- Chrysler dumps agency linked to F-Bomb tweet (windsorstar.com)
- Employee canned after sending out F-Bomb on Chrysler’s Twitter account
- Brand Journalism: “It’s a Trap!” (adgeek.us)
- SXSWi Video: JWT’s David Eastman (clickz.com)
- Chrysler red-faced and fuming after employee posts obscene tweet against Detroit drivers on company’s official Twitter feed (dailymail.co.uk)
I am heading over to Austin Texas for South by Southwest Interactive Festival next week.
- SX Social website – the insiders registration site where you can create a profile, connect with friends and see what’s inside their freebie “Swag” bag. Also SXSW Go which is a mobile app including a handy scheduling service.
- Mobile Tweetdeck – you’ve gotta be able to track the conversation so set up a search on #sxsw now [better than in past years where you had to un-follow people who weren't at the congress in order to filter tweets].
- Instagram – the photo sharing app that allows you to filter a ‘vintage’ look onto them. Combine with Impression to watermark them with your URL and it’s a winner.
I am going to cheat and add another
- Feedblitz allows your RSS feed to be sent by email – but also integrates Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and enables multiple feeds to be curated using the tags. I’m going to create a #SXSW tag which will allow my followers who only want the updates from the interactive event to go to their emails. Neat.
I have a range of Firefox and Chrome browser addins that I use regularly. You may find them useful too because they can speed up your work process and also create a library for you to check back on.
These help speed up research when I am checking out a company or a person; they speed up writing blog posts and website updates and they help me find and share useful sites.
One of the best is the Fast Youtube downloader says it all.
I also like Zemanta - perfect for Blogging assistance in LiveWriter, and most blogging platforms gets you links, images and related articles.
Measure It which allows a pixel count measure of anything you put on a website.
Rank Checker which checks page ranks for anywhere you visit.
And last and most importantly, the Delicious Bookmarks plugin. I would truly be lost without this as it allows me to tag and categorise web pages so that I can find them again later. My digital “photocopier” has everything in it from ideas for client work to helpful documents, e-books and much more.
If you want to read my Delicious updates I am rcaroe - follow me. They also get automatically tweeted as “Links for 31-01/2010″, in case you’ve wondered what they were.
