Digital Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘Digital Marketing’

Confidential Marketing

Monday, August 9th, 2010

How much of your business is a secret?

In the way that many business owners separate their marketing from their actual day-to-day business, I think that most of what goes on at a place is secret. In other words, there’s the face of the business, the part that customers see. And there are the hands of the business, the part that does the actual work.

The hidden parts aren’t necessarily bad. They might just not be part of what the owner sees as the customer experience. But then, for almost every single small business in existence, why have them at all? Especially with the options that are available today. What you’re hiding, a competitor is showing, improving, and turning into marketing.

It makes me wonder what has to be hidden. If I wanted to find ways to improve my business, looking at what’s hidden would be a good place to start.

Tags: business relationships, business trust, content, Digital Marketing, ideas
Posted in Digital Marketing | No Comments »

Get Help Now: A 12 Step Program For Digital Marketing

Friday, July 16th, 2010

You know you need help. Just the fact that you’re reading this right now proves it.

Admit it: you’ve been meaning to update your site for years. But, for some reason, you can’t. You’ve used every excuse in the book, but the reality is this: your content has become unmanageable.

If you’re serious, if you’re ready to make a change, there is a way…

The 12 Steps Of Marketers Anonymous

1. You admitted that you are powerless over what you call your website as it stands right now.

2. You came to believe that a digital marketing team could restore you to sanity.

3. You made a decision to turn your website over to your digital marketing team because you didn’t understand it. Yet.

4. You made a searching and fearless inventory of your content, noting what can be salvaged and why.

5. You admitted the exact nature of your wrongs, from losing passwords to hiring your nephew to build the damn thing in the first place.

6. You were entirely ready to have your digital marketing team remove the defective site from the internet.

7. You humbly ask you marketing team to make the logo bigger. When they refuse, you finally understand why.

8. You made a list of all pages that were wrong, and became willing to amend each one.

9. You made direct amends to those pages, and became fully involved in your digital marketing strategy.

10. You continue to take a personal inventory of your site, and when you were wrong, promptly admitted it, via twitter.

11. Sought through communication and timely feedback to better understand your digital marketing strategy, learning to use new tools and techniques to carry that out.

12. Having had a technical awakening as a result of these steps, you tried to carry this message to other marketers, and practice these principles in everything you do online.

Tags: content, Digital Marketing, getting started in social media, Web Development, writing
Posted in Digital Marketing | No Comments »

Working With Your Digital Marketing Team

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

First, why work with a digital marketing team?

Digital marketing companies:

create strategy
design
develop
optimize
train
measure

Do any of those sound like processes that could help your marketing efforts?

The Alternative

Yes, of course you could have your brother’s nephew design your website in Front Page. You can also create your own fan page and spam it to bits, post asking for more fans and end every sentence with three !’s. Run your own pay per click campaigns without landing pages and bid management. Want to simply use the same copy from your brochure online? No problem.

Forgive me for sounding jaded, but I’m, well, jaded. I’ve talked to many companies that use that type of rationale I explained above to not hire a digital marketing company.

The fact is, you can run your own digital marketing from the ground up. However, you can also build a car from parts, but why would you do a job that others have years of experience in doing?

By hiring a digital marketing company you can expect efficiency, experience, and in-the-trenches knowledge. You can also expect to be asked to communicate and participate.

The Relationship

Entering into any relationship, whether it be work or personal, requires several things to be successful. Beginning a digital marketing project is no different; people will often enter into a contract not knowing what exactly is expected of them in order to achieve success. Even when entering with eyes wide open, there are still potential pitfalls that can derail your project.

Understanding that digital marketing is important to your company is half the battle. If you and your company don’t buy into the process, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

Once the contract is signed is when the real work begins. It’s important to realize that signing the contract marks the beginning of your work, not the end. View it as an investment; you will reap what you sow.

The Communication

It is always important to make sure everyone is clear on how the project will run and how (and where) communication lines will operate. The time to communicate your hopes, wants, expectations is at the onset, not mid-way.

Establish preferred methods of communication, and don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. Email and Instant Messages offer a great opportunity for quick, concise communication. However, it does not convey tone, sarcasm, and poor attempts at humor.

Provide direction, and still let your team “do their thing”. Give ideas about the design you have in mind. Help brainstorm keyword seed lists. However, let your designer design, let your SEO do the keyword research.

The Participation

Digital marketing projects are processes, not events.

In order to reach the finish line, milestones must be passed and completed. Almost always, you will be asked to provide some form of feedback and approval for those milestones to be met, and for progress to be continued toward project completion.

Providing quality, timely feedback is important to the workflow of your project. When presented with design ideas, a reply of “I don’t like it” helps no one, and serves simply to continue spinning your wheels instead of making progress.

When you participate, you are part of the process. In today’s world, there really is no “completion” when it comes to marketing online. You need to continue to publish, to monitor, measure, and modify. Participating in the planning, the building and the implementation will keep your marketing efforts worth your money and time.

Tags: Digital Marketing, getting started in social media, partnerships, Pat Strader, project management
Posted in Digital Marketing | No Comments »

Developing A Content Calendar 101

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Quit stalling.

Your digital marketing needs some new content. But instead of writing something interesting, something that only appeals to your fans, something not everyone will like but is true to your personality, you write what you wrote last year. You’re having a sale. There’s a special. You’re so much better than the competition.

Ugh.

Part of the reason you went that route is because it was easy. Rewriting your old stuff is the path of least marketing resistance. No one will call you out, no one will make fun of you. No one will really notice. But you can check “done”.

A much, much better way to go is to create a content calendar. Planning out your content inspires creativity and gives perspective. If you’re putting time and money into digital marketing, you want to make a content calendar. Here’s how:

Make Some Strategy Decisions: You need to think about platforms, distribution, and consistency. Also tone, style, and substance. All the content in the world isn’t going to make a difference without the planning to make it worthwhile. Who are you writing for? How often? What does your reader need? Who will do the writing? Who owns it after it’s done? What are the outcomes you want at the end?

Define Your Subjects: One cool thing among the many offered in a typical blog platform is the ability to categorize your work according to subject. I’ve had a lot of success starting here in a whiteboard session. If I want to plan out blog posts for a year, it’s going to be a lot more cohesive if I can define several subjects that my posts will cover. It’s a great method for staying on the path you set out with your strategy.

Calendars Aren’t Always Temporal: Another thing I’ve learned is that a content calendar doesn’t always have to follow a time schedule. For instance, if you group your topics according to 6 subjects, you might want to fill each subject with 8 topics, for a goal of 2 posts a week for a year. Then you can pick and choose which topics to write about according to what you’re learning as you write (metrics, man… metrics).

Timely Posts Are Smart: Having said the above, it can also help to plan your topics out according to day. IF there’s a big conference in your vertical, it’s probably good to have a plan to how you’re going to talk about that. Planning your calendar according to day can also help motivate writers; deadlines have amazing power when wielded by the right editors. If, in your case, that’s the same person, all the better to keep you on track.

So, here’s one process for doing all that:

-Sit all the principles down in front of a big whiteboard.

-Discuss the strategy points listed above. Depending on the scope of your project, this phase alone can take hours or weeks. Plan accordingly. Also, be ready to change strategy as the process unfolds.

-Write out your subjects. Make sure they fit in with the strategy points you’ve decided on.

-Fill those subjects with topics.

-Arrange as necessary. Go with a calendar. Assign topics. Whatever structure works best for your project, you’ll need to build it before you start writing.

-Follow through by updating, revising, editing, and monitoring your work. It’s not dead once you hit the publish button (the map is not the terrain, after all).

What do you think? Ever built a content calendar before? What do you do that’s not included here?

Share, people. Share.

Tags: blogs, content, content marketing, content strategy, Digital Marketing, getting started in social media, marketing mindset, motivation, project management
Posted in Content Creation | No Comments »

The Strategy Behind Planning Your Blog Posts

Friday, June 25th, 2010

If you’re a good blogger (i.e. you post regularly, always have things to write about), then congratulations.

I have a cookie for you. And, hey, keep on writing that post.

For the rest of us, it’s not so easy. While we know blogging is important for many reasons (for me, it’s SEO!), it can still be a tough nut for non-writers to crack. Planning posts is second-nature for good bloggers, and is something that can help us bad bloggers move to the right side of the tracks.

As an example, I started the Matterhorn Marketing blog back in 2006. Despite knowing the importance of posting, I was never able to get it together to maximize its value to the business.

Why Planning Your Blog Matters

The importance of planning posts, as a part of an underlying content strategy, can help eliminate the paralysis by analysis that prevents a lot of us from becoming one of the good guys.

Simply brainstorming topics that are of interest to you, and more importantly are of interest to your audience can help create an outline of post topics. This alone can prove to be a valuable step.

I mean, I’m certain that I’m not the only one that knows they need to feed the blog, logs into WordPress and then stares blindly at the dashboard thinking, “what should I write about?”

Our resident content strategist and house-blogger, Ben Curnett, has placed me (as he does with all of our partners) on a pretty simple path by providing a framework which makes posting regularly seem less, well, scary.

Additionally, the bar has been set low. I know (I know!) can write a few hundred words per week. I know you can too.

Simply put, planning blog posts for the bad blogger.

Create a list of topics which interest you AND your audience
Plug those topics into a calendar
Set attainable goals

The benefits of regular postings are numerous. As an SEO (Search Engine Optimization’er) at heart, I always find myself approaching content creation from that perspective. As a result of creating consistent posts, a few of the SEO benefits you can expect are:

Google and Bing will visit your site more often. They love fresh (good) content.
You’ll create more opportunity to be found through long-tail search. More on long tail terms in another post… it’s on my schedule.
You’ll provide more opportunity and reasons for people to link to you.

How do you plan your posts and what benefit do you receive from it? Or, perhaps a better question, how would planning help you?

And why haven’t you done it yet?

Tags: blogs, content strategy, Digital Marketing, Pat Strader, planning
Posted in Blogging, SEO | No Comments »

Is Social Media Your World Cup?

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Here’s what I think:

For most small business owners in America, digital marketing is like soccer. They don’t understand it. They don’t see the strategy. They don’t have the skills it takes to implement their tactics. They can’t execute.

I grew up with a superstar soccer player in my family. My brother was a force to be reckoned with on the pitch. He was a huge, fast, and often angry defender who would make strikers fear a breakaway if they heard is terminator-like stride chasing them down. My bro stopped more goals with his feet than most keepers ever will with their hands.

I, on the other hand, sucked.

Slow and clumsy, I was an easy target for anyone with a half decent handle on the ball. I stopped playing soccer when I was about 10, and the world rejoiced.

But I have a huge appreciation for the game. I understand it on a deep level, and I know what the players are trying to do as they move the ball.

Most Americans don’t. Or, actually, most American’s didn’t, until now.

Soccer has moved out of it’s infancy in America. Right now, we’re seeing a revolution in the game where it’s no longer really acceptable to say, “I don’t really get it,” or worse, “It’s just so boring.” America is moving on.

The same thing is happening with social media. As a small business owner, it’s not okay to not understand social media marketing anymore. You must get in the game, understand your strategy, create ideas in the space and execute them.

Or here’s your result: you’ll get burned. Juked. Nutmegged (google it).

If you don’t become a social media marketing player, or at least an avid fan, you’re going to lose. As the rest of the country celebrates, you’ll be the one wondering what the big deal is. Your business will pay a price.

Here’s how social media is like World Cup soccer:

-It takes time. There’s a lot of work that goes into a goal. Set plays (strategy) and constant practice (tactics) eventually produce a payoff.

-It takes skill. You can’t expect to walk on the field and be successful without putting your time in to learn the game. Be persistent and skills will grow.

-It takes care. No two ways about it. You have to change your perception of what the game means before you can see any benefit. If you don’t care about it, it won’t ever work for you.

-It takes a team. If you try to do it alone, you’ll fail. The whole point is to build the best team you can, people that will share the ball and work together.

-It takes ideas. The most brilliant plays are inventive, new, beautiful. Ideas move fast. The best ones turn into goals.

What are your thoughts? What are the consequences for ignoring the world as it changes?

Tags: content, Digital Marketing, getting started in social media, Goals, World Cup
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

4 Ways To Use QR Codes Right Now

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

Have you heard of Quick Response (QR) Codes?

If not, you will. Soon. QR Codes are defined in Wikipedia as (I wish there was a better location with a definition!):

A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

Simply put, a QR Code is like a bar code that you see in the grocery store. However, instead of telling you how much your box of Fruity Pebbles might cost, it can share data in lots of different forms, from a link to an SMS message to almost anything you can think of.

The utility that these codes afford you (and the end-user, too) are equally as diverse. For the end user, it’s a method to quickly (QR = Quick Response, remember?) and easily retrieve, obtain or interact, using a tool that is nearly ubiquitous: a phone.

All users need is a handheld device with a free reader installed. For the business owner or marketer it provides not only a method of information dispersal, but also a method of tracking. While not all QR Code generators offer the ability to track usage, it’s not hard to find ones that do.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking about how to use them, and why…

Ideas for QR Code Use:

Make Offline Trackable and Interactive

Create a code linking to an optimized mobile-friendly landing page. Place the code on your print ads, rack cards even billboards. Utilize a simple call to action to scan (which you can measure) and re-enforce that call to action on the landing page. You just made an offline component interactive.

Go Paperless

Do you display at trade shows and conferences? Many that do spend time running to Kinko’s for copies (and then extra copies). You then hand off to attendees to be shoved in an over-flowing bag of other similar pieces. Display a code, linked to a PDF that folks can scan, download and print once they are back to their computer. Simple, trackable, cost-effective. And very green.

Make your contact information portable

You can create a vcard containing all of the same information from your business card, and display as a QR Code. I use one on my Twitter profile, have created stickers which I often place on my conference badges, and I’m even geektacular enough to have made a t-shirt with my vcard code, which I sometimes wear.

Perfect for Travel and Tourism

As many of your know, we work very closely with the Travel and Tourism industry. There are tons of opportunities for QR Codes to intersect with travel. Creating a QR code for monuments or historic locations can provide visitors with more information, even delivering interactive information. The photo depicts an “in the wild” example. I am told that they are becoming more prevalent on and around monuments in the Washington D.C. area as well. Battlefield maps, videos and photos, the possibilities are endless.

If you aren’t using QR Codes, it’s time to start thinking about putting them in play. Smart phone use is soaring (Readers are available for many other camera-enabled phones too), and many are coming out of the box with a reader installed. And the codes themselves can be created fast and cheap and provide tracking for your offline campaigns.

These are just a few. What are some ways you’re seeing QR Codes being used?

Tags: Digital Marketing, ideas, Pat Strader, QR Codes, Social Media
Posted in Digital Marketing | 6 Comments »

I Laughed, I Cried, I SOBCon-ed

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Here is what I envisioned: I would post the definitive, penultimate, consummate recap blog post about SOBCon 2010.

After all, it was my first time attending the conference. Who doesn’t want to get a “totally new and fresh perspective” from someone as new and fresh (not to mention witty) as myself? It would be like looking at SOBCon with brand new eyes!

As the newbie often learns, there’s a better way to do it. One of my favorite SOBCon panelists, Steve Woodruff, posted the official-and-conclusive best SOBCon recap yesterday with “The Official Post-Conference Re-Cap Blog Post Template”.

I was disappointed that I only got the chance to briefly introduce myself to Steve during the conference. Now I’m crushed. Yes, the post is brilliant, but there’s more.

What he had to say on the panel about battling depression mirrored my own experience. I know that I’ve never heard anyone so open and honest about it, and neither have you (here’s his background post, “Clearing Clouds”). How refreshing. And BTW, this is the first I’ve ever said anything about my own battles with depression. Steve’s example showed me that I really have nothing to hide.

So, you want to turn “transparency” from buzzword to real life? Follow Steve Woodruff’s example.

Which is exactly what I intend to do with this post. He wrote a template; I love templates! And I know he meant it with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, but I’m running with it. So here goes, with Steve’s template as a point of reference…

I Laughed, I Cried, I SOBCon-ed

I had a wonderful time. That’s a blunt way to start, but if I’m summarizing the whole SOBCon experience, I can’t be any more plain than that. It was awesome. Fabulous. If I was a guy that used exclaimation points without irony, I’d use them, without reservation, about SOBCon 2010 (!).

Terry Starbucker and Liz Strauss started the whole thing off with the word “love”. And I have to say, never having been before, I thought that was setting the bar, um, kind of high. You know what I mean? I was thinking business. Community building. Learning. Not love. I was wrong. My thanks to them and the sponsors for hosting, sharing, and teaching some love.

Here’s what I learned: Action makes the difference. Nearly every speaker echoed this sentiment in some way, most by example. Sheila Scarborough and Becky McCray did it with a session on how they invented and launched their business Tourism Currents. Extreme Leadership author Steve Farber did it by diagramming his Greater Than Yourself program. Chris Brogan did it by being Chris Brogan. And reformed Master Of The Universe Hank Wasiak did it best for me by giving away these 4 beautiful, actionable words rooted in Asset Based Thinking: Tell The Truth Fast (it’s the “fast” part that makes all the difference).

One real shocker was the uber-prevalence of a totally new technology in the digital marketing world: paper and pen. It starts up every time (another @sheilaS-ism). Going to have to check it out when it’s out of beta. Other than that, not much to report, except that I got silly putty all over my iphone case and had to get a new one (long story).

(skipping optional paragraph 5, if you’re following along at home -Ben)

Oh, and one more Chris Brogan thing: You can’t eat a hug. Chris was pretty up front about his ramen-noodle, living-on-a-prayer past which I didn’t know about (I think I was the only one there that didn’t maybe? I don’t know), and I love the paradox in his work that’s central right here: the more you give, the more you get, even when you’re dirt poor.

I didn’t get to hang out with nearly the number of people I wanted to (I’m looking at you, Julie Roads). But rather than focus on the misses, I’m going to say that I was amazed that I got to spend time with a ton of brilliant folks (Shashi Bellamkonda, Lorelle Van Fossen, Dave Barger, Jay Jay French (!), Steve Sherlock, George Kruger, Mary-Lynn Foster, Estrella Rosenberg, Angel Djambazov) including the incredible Glenda Watson Hyatt. I walked back to the hotel with her from the party on night 1, and read through her I’ll Do It Myself blog later that night. Holy. Moly. If you don’t know her, you should. And SOBCon 2011 can’t come soon enough.

Anyway, there’s a community out there for everyone, and I’m pretty fortunate in that I think I found mine at SOBCon.

Remember, you can’t eat a hug. But you can come pretty close. Thanks, SOBCon.

Tags: blogs, business relationships, content, content marketing, Digital Marketing, Inspiration, leadership, marketing strategy
Posted in Thanks | 5 Comments »

How Do You Make The Switch?

Friday, April 16th, 2010

A small business that I know pretty well made a big mistake last week.

Here’s what they did: they hired a person to do their social media marketing.

Not a mistake on its face, right? Right. Having someone in a full time position to manage social media at this point should be obvious. And if it’s not, you’re reading the wrong blogs.

It’s so obvious, in fact, that for most small businesses, the marketing department and the social media manager should be the same person. The ubiquity (one of my favorite words, and a good name for a band BTW) of social media is such that to separate it from the rest of your marketing strategy is, well, dumb.

Back to our business at hand: they hired a person to manage their social media marketing. Nice. Good job, small business that I know pretty well. Way to go.

Until I found out why they hired her. She’s gen Y. That’s it. No experience other than having gone through high school with an ever-present facebook chat window open and an unlimited texting plan.

How bad a decision is this? Catastrophic. It’s like hiring your high school newspaper editor to design all of your print ads (no offense to the high school newspaper editors, current or former, but c’mon- that piece you did on how the fruit cup didn’t contain cherries last week wasn’t exactly the NYT).

Or hiring someone to run your shoe store because they’re bipedal. The point is that an internet age does not an internet marketer make.

Here’s how to switch:

-Embrace Social Realize that marketing socially is better than marketing traditionally. For small businesses, this is an absolute open-and-shut case. Over the long term, the ROI is better, the research is better, the metrics are better. At its core, it’s a better model for your business, because small businesses are about connections, and so is social media.

-Get Familiar Do some research on the space before you make any decisions. It’s said that the internet is an echo chamber, so maybe it’s ironic that the loudest echo is this: listen. Listen to what marketers are saying about the direction that social media is taking. Get familiar with the strategies and tactics. Once you understand a bit about how the gears turn, you can make decisions based on information vs. what’s all this hubub about the Twitter.

-Be True To Yourself Just because marketing is going digital doesn’t mean you have to all of a sudden become a geek. Your company has a personality. Lucky for us, that’s social media marketing’s strong suit. Copywriting isn’t dead, but it’s looking a whole lot more like the text you sent your sales team. Transparency is a bitch for most older businesses, especially the levels of transparency needed for good social media marketing. Anyone that tells you any different isn’t looking hard enough.

-Continuing Ed The big problem with most small businesses is that they’re static. Marketing may get a new look each season, but the tactics are exactly the same. Social media marketing is different. It’s a space that changes fast, and your HPIC (Head Poster In Charge) should be changing with it. And so should you. The cool part is that, digitally, this can happen with amazing ease and grace if you let it. It’s a matter of recognizing change and preparing for it, not just reacting to it.

Put another way: Everyone is aware of social media. Not many people understand it.

When you make the switch, be positive that you’re on the right side of that fence.

Tags: blogs, content, Digital Marketing, getting started in social media, relatonships
Posted in Digital Marketing | No Comments »

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Posts Tagged ‘Digital Marketing’

Confidential Marketing

The Strategy Behind Planning Your Blog Posts

I Laughed, I Cried, I SOBCon-ed