Category — Online marketing

I’ve got a whole bunch of good links for your mid-week browsing. Here we go:

1. Blogging: Add TwitterCounter to your blog to display how many people are following you on Twitter. I’ve added it over on the left, under the “Connect to Me” section.

2. Marketing: Price vs. customer service, which is more important? MarketingSherpa has a great chart that shows that companies often care more about customer service than price from their vendors. Losing customers? Maybe your pricing isn’t the problem. Maybe you need to take a good long look at your customer service. By the way, think about the implications for blogs, which are free to readers: The quality of what you provide to your readers, how you treat them, and how responsive you are to any comments or emails they send you may well determine how loyal they are.

3. Social media: Angela Connor is the community manager at WRAL.com here in North Carolina. She’s got a really cool blog foused on managing online communities, an increasingly important topic. Check it out.

4. Online marketing: Chris Brogan takes a look at how we can define the spectrum of social media marketing efforts, from banner ads at one end to dialogue between businesses and their customers. This helps to frame the slippery question of what should we do if we want to use social media marketing.

5. Writing: Copyblogger has links to two free teleclasses on copywriting and marketing. Free — so go forth and learn.

6. Social media: The Caffeinated Blog has eight tips for using StumbledUpon effectively. By the way, I love this blog’s name and wish I had thought of it first. But the blogger, Kari Rippetoe, has great content and is worth subscribing to. (And you can Stumble this post if you like — there’s a link at the bottom to make it easy.)

7. Management and career: Jeremiah points out that when you hire someone, you also get their network, including their online network. That can pose challenges for businesses, but it also brings opportunities. This is not a new idea, and applies to offline networks as well as online networks. In The Tom Peters Seminar, Peters describes the modern corporation as a Rolodex (the book was published in ‘94, in the early days of the consumer Internet). The more experienced I get as a professional, the more I think that a greater and greater portion of my value as an employee comes from my existing network and my ability to nurture and grow that network. How are you working on your network?

8. Values: Christopher Penn reminds us that, to quote Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, “with great power comes great responsibility.” What are you using your powers of marketing and communications for?

A couple of overdue posts:

• I am was one of guests on Bob Knorpp’s BeanCast podcast, where we discuss all things marketing. This week’s show included discussion of Lionsgate deal with Google to allow its content on YouTube, the InBev-Budweiser merger, data about the changing U.S. consumer, and more. Please check it out.
• Over at ProBlogger, Darren Rowse had a great idea, asking everyone to post their social media info (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) in the comments of a post to create a kind of social media directory of ProBlogger readers. As of this morning, the post had more than 400 members. Go add your information if you want to build your network — comments will close within the next 24 hours.

Wired magazine’s cover story this month is about Julia Allison, an Internet celebrity who is famous for, well, umm … being famous, at least online. And one of the bedrock truths in our modern, media-saturated economy is that fame has a dollar value.

So, if you’re seeking fame, you might be able to learn a thing or two from Julia, right?

But perhaps you don’t care to read all about how she first got exposure in Gawker by going to a Nick Denton Halloween party dressed as a “condom fairy.” No problem. I have read the article, and have extracted all the parts that are relevant to those of us who (1) don’t live in New York City and/or (2) are not a “hot woman with an exhibitionist streak.”

1. Crash parties. Go to the channels where you have the least competition. With email, blogs and Tweets online, there’s lots and lots of competition. In person, there’s a lot less.

2. Think of yourself as a subject in a magazine profile (for example, in Wired). Everything you post online should add to your character. And keep it coming – Julia says it’s like adding wood to a fire to keep it burning. Needless to say, multiple channels (blog, Twitter, You Tube, etc.) are helpful here. Marketers call this branding.

3. Cultivate your fans. Interact with them online, answer their emails, respond to their comments on your blog, leave comments on their blogs.

4. Extend your brand to others. Once you’ve established Brand You, recruit others – Brand You Juniors – and help them build their brand by linking to them, advising them and providing them some of your legitimacy. Multiple platforms (i.e. people) will strengthen and expand your brand.

By the way, in case you think this all too snarky or tongue in cheek, I should mention that Julia has launched her own Web portal and has signed a deal with Bravo to develop her own reality TV show. Really.

And if you do want to read the whole Wired story, click here.

Got some more tips on branding online? Please share them in the comments.

Is email the new blogging?

I’m serious. For all the hype about email being dead, the vast majority of people online are still using email, using it as much or more than ever, and will continue to use it. Which brings me to my question: Is email the new blogging?

Three examples

• When Jason Calacanis announced he was dropping his blog and instead starting an email list, many people just took it as yet another publicity stunt by the entrepreneur and online showman. But I think Jason’s move to an email list might be symptomatic of a renewed focus on the power of email. So far, his emails have been substantive and interesting, and worth reading.
• Power blogger Darren Rowse, publisher of ProBlogger.com (which I highly recommend), relaunched his email newsletter recently. He’s not giving up his blog, but the newsletter (which I also recommend) has additional content in it beyond the blog.
• Peter Shankman started his “Help a Reporter Out” emails on Facebook, migrated it to its own web site and seems to be swiftly turning it into a business, all in just a few months. The email is designed to connect reporters to sources. Both reporters and sources (or, in my case, the public relations pros who represent potential sources) can sign up and receive the email for free. And I think HARO could turn into a real competitor to ProfNet’s paid service, which does pretty much the same thing. This week HARO crossed the 15,000-member mark.

Why email?

Are people are beginning to see some value in email as an online publishing tool that blogs can’t provide.

For example, with email you have a way of counting and contacting your readers — you have their email addresses.

With email, you only have to worry about getting people to sign up and stay subscribed. No search engine optimization, no linking strategies, minimal design. Sure, you have to think about getting past spam filters, but if people want to receive your email usually that’s not a big problem.

With email you don’t have to moderate comments or “create community.” Though you can create community. Gary Vaynerchuk, host of the vlog Wine Library TV, cultivates an army of 80,000 “Vayniacs” in large part by spending 12 hours a day on email. (I can’t find this online, but it’s in the August issue of Wired magazine, on page 112, as a sidebar to the cover story on Julia Allison, which I’ll be blogging about later this week.)

With email, when people opt-in to read it, they’re giving you permission to communicate to them about what you want to — to sell yourself, your products, your services, your ideas. Is that more powerful than the often-passive readership on a blog? I don’t know.

Blogs aren’t dying, but …

This doesn’t mean blogs are dying. But I have a feeling we’re going to see more and more email newsletters, from bloggers and others, and a renewed emphasis on turning email into a really produtive content channel. Although you can subscribe to my blog via email (the little form is there on the right-hand side of the page), I’m not about to start an email newsletter. For now, at least, a blog works for me. But I bet we’re going to see more people launching email newsletters.

What do you think? Are we going to see more of these email publishing ventures? Are there other examples of this I’ve missed? Or am I making too much out of a handful of isolated anecdotes? Tell me what you think in the comments.

Well, that’s a good question, isn’t it? We’re all talking about social media. We’re all doing social media. Social media is supposed to be the next big thing. But what is it?

Marta Z. Kagan has a pretty much the best explanation I’ve seen:

(via Scott Monty)

So this is it, this is what I’ve been counting down to: The public launch of my new blog, MarkTzk.com.

I’ve been blogging, a little irregularly, and have had my own domain (www.thoughtsignals.com) for nearly eight years, but I felt it was time to try something a little more focused. I’m going to give thoughtsignals, which has always suffered from a lack of focus, a rest. I’ll write more about why I launched this blog, and what I hope to accomplish here, later. And if you’re reading this on thoughtsignals.com, where this has been cross-posted, I encourage you to go over to marktzk.com and subscribe to the RSS feed or to the daily email update.

Now, on to the contest. In the last couple of weeks as I’ve been counting down on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and thoughtsignals.com, I’ve been surprised by how much attention I’ve gotten. Coworkers, friends and acquaintances have all been guessing what I might be counting down to. (For the record, only Cameron Tew figured it out before today.) People guessed that maybe RLF was going to have a big announcement, or I was going to have a new child, or start my own business, or go skydiving (!), or more. Let me just say that all of you have much more creative, interesting ideas about my life than I do. Thank you. I’m honored.

But I also hope that no one feels let down by the fact that I’m launching a blog. I mean, c’mon, everybody and their mother has a blog.

So, to make this a little more interesting, I’m going to have a contest. You can participate. You could win. And if you do win, you’ll get a $50 Amazon gift card.

One of the topics this blog will focus on is the use of social media in marketing. So I’m looking for a short piece on that. Give me no more than 500 words (remember, longer is not necessarily better) in response to this:

“Social media (including blogging, wikis, social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) is better than, worse than or just different than traditional marketing and public relations techniques. Please provide examples, anecdotes, links, etc. to support your point.”

Here are the rules:

1. The total length (excluding the headline) must be 500 words or less. The title/headline doesn’t count toward the total word count.

2. The entry must be posted someplace online that’s publicly accessible — a blog, Facebook page, whatever — and must include a hyperlink back to this post: http://marktzk.com/launch-contest. (If you don’t have a place to post this, one option might be to create a Squidoo page.)

3. Please email the link to your entry to me at marktzk at gmail dot com, and put “MarkTzk.com contest” in the subject line. Your email must reach me by midnight this Friday, July 18.

4. Multiple submissions are fine, but each individual submission must follow these rules. If your entry is a blog posting, each one must be a separate post.

5. As I receive entries I will post the links to them here. So if you have a blog you should get some traffic out of this, too.

6. I reserve the right to disqualify entries that are pornographic, contain hate speech or are otherwise objectionable. (Hey, I believe in free speech, but it’s my contest.)

7. The winner will be announced in one week, next Monday morning, July 25.

Got it? If you have questions, leave them in the comments or shoot me an email. Otherwise, gentle readers, start your keyboards.

And even if you don’t want to enter the contest, I hope you’ll point your feedreader at that big orange RSS icon in the upper right hand corner and subscribe to the feed, or put your email address into the little subscribe box over to the right to receive the blog posts via email (just one email a day).

Todd Defren at SHIFT Communications has a great post about balancing the needs of ‘personalities’ — people with their own online brands — and the companies they work for.

It’s an oft-cited maxim at SHIFT that “we run a talent agency, not a PR agency” – so Chris’s words rang true for me.  Think about some of our most recent hires: Doug Haslam (@DougH, with 4,000 Twitter followers), Chris Lynn (rockstar blogger), Amanda Gravel (blogger), Sandy Kalik (tweeter), et al.

We’ve made many more hires than this handful, of course, and expect great things of all of them – but, specific to these “well-known” people and their personal brands?  We consider them to be “on loan” to SHIFT for the duration of their tenure.  And I expect more and more of our employees (and future employees) will have their own personal brands either well-established or on the rise.

Might we see the rise of formal policies that not only address things like blogging, but also the whole gamut of “personal branding” activities? Maybe.

Where do you think the line should be drawn? How do balance the potential that someone with a strong personal brand brings with the needs of a company that has its own brand?

Here’s a round-up of links that ought to be of use for anyone marketing online:

• Get the Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II via free download.
• Chris Brogan shows you to organize for more efficient, effective blogging.
• Skelliewag explains how to get some link love from Digg.
• Christopher S. Penn says you can take advantage of those RSS scrapers that steal your blog posts to actually bring more traffic to your site.

Please let me know if you find these links useful.

SEO 2.0 has a list of the top 10 URL design mistakes. It turns out, there are some basic principles you should follow if want to create URLs that are friendlier both for search engines and human web searchers. I’d also note that these shorter, human-readable URLs are also far better when you’re pasting them into a tweet or a Facebook update.

Link.