Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category
August 23rd, 2010 | 
Author: It’s not easy to develop a large follower base on Twitter. The easiest way is to cheat and waste your money buying thousands of followers from one of these online “businesses” that offer such services.
What is to be gained from buying followers? So what if you have 15,000 followers who have no interest in your business and the message you are communicating? Buying followers simply does not work, because having a huge following on Twitter will not affect your business unless your followers care about what you are tweeting.
Courtesy of WikiCommons
We have all seen the effect of having a huge following on Twitter; just ask Southwest Airlines. The reason guys like Kevin Smith can create such a huge buzz on Twitter is because his plethora of followers are interested in what he is saying.
A business can have the same type of following, but it is much harder and takes time. First, it takes content. Develop a strategy for your page, and what you want to put on it. Send out messages that matter to your potential followers. If you are in retail then tweet about deals and coupons. Tweet about behind-the-scenes happenings that would interest your audience.
Next, follow people or companies relevant to your business. If you have a designer jeans boutique, then follow designers and fashion industry leaders. Your targeted audience will be following the same pages, and they will find you through who you are following.
Finally, be patient. Social media is like fishing. You keep throwing bait out there, and one day you are going start reeling them in like crazy. Be active, be fast, and be smart about your content and your site will grow.
This post was written by Ryan Smith
Ryan is Manager of Social Media and Business Development at Raidious. He is a public relations professional who specializes in utilizing social media as a marketing communications tool. Ryan has experience in sports, politics, real estate, and many other industries.
Corporate Blogging for Dummies is now available on Amazon and in book stores. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.
Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.
Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!
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Tags: Audience, Blogging For Dummies, Business Development, Buzz, Communications Tool, Coupons, Designer Jeans, Designers, Fashion Industry, Follower, Followers, Industry Leaders, Kevin Smith, Marketing Communications, Plethora, Public Relations, Ryan Smith, Southwest Airlines, Twitter, Wikicommons | 
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Earlier this week, some of you noticed that I went after a blogger who was stealing content from the Marketing Technology Blog. At times, this happens as someone gets excited and decides that they’re doing me a favor by extending my audience. Not the case. This joker even published the post out onto a third-party site with his own name as the author. Not acceptable.
This guy posted the stolen post on his blogger blog. That wasn’t smart, since Blogger does comply with Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notes. I filled out Blogger’s form and received notice today that they had removed the stolen content.
I am very appreciative of Blogger’s support on this!
How to Prepare for Getting Your Content Stolen
It’s important to note that I purposely leave a breadcrumb trail in my blog posts. Very seldom do these thieves rewrite or copy the content and paste it. Instead, they write algorithms and grab your RSS feed and simply push it out to their blog. Most of the time this happens, the blogger isn’t aware. I am. One of the reasons I developed the PostPost plugin was so that I could edit and add content to my footer. Every post on my RSS feed has some sort of link back to my blog.
Next, I set up Google Alerts with my domain as the search term (as well as some others I can’t tell you about). Now – each time someone links to my blog, I get an email alert with a chunk of the post. It’s instantly recognizable when I read my content in the body of the alert.
Go to war
Perhaps one of the sneakiest things I do is that I instantly purchase images from iStockPhoto for all of my posts for the next week or so. Since I pay for the photos, it’s legal for me to use them but no one else. If you’re stupid enough to be stealing my content, you’re probably publishing these purchased images as well. Now I have a major corporation hellbent on fighting copyright theft on my side. As soon as I see the posts published, I contact support through iStockPhoto and report each of the posts, the images, their source and that they were stolen.
To be honest, I’m not sure if iStockPhoto has pursued any of the cases… all of them have taken down the posts when I’ve found them and told them. There’s still some guilty little pleasure in it for me, though. I don’t want to be on the wrong side of a copyright suit with iStockPhoto. They’ve got deep pockets and a lot of lawyers.
Tell their Friends
I’m not quiet about it. I do a Whois.net lookup to identify the hosting company and the person who owns the site. I’ll try to contact the person directly at first. Then the emails go out to the hosting company, tweets get angrier, and Facebook Wall messages get posted. I won’t stop until I begin to get responses back.
As I said before, I’ve never had to go beyond this point. There’s always the chance that someone will steal my content and be offshore, hidden, and virtually impossible to chase. I’ll do my best to report them to the search engines at that point, but I will NOT let them get away with it. You shouldn’t either!
This post was written by Douglas Karr
Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.
Did you know Douglas Karr's book is coming out in August? You can pre-order Corporate Blogging for Dummies now on Amazon. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.
Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.
Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!
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Posted in Blogging |
Tags: Audience, Blog, Blogger, Breadcrumb Trail, Chunk, Digital Millenium Copyright Act, Email Alert, Footer, Google, Hellbent, Images, Istockphoto, Joker, Marketing Technology, Search Term, Smart, Stolen Content, Stupid, Thieves, Third Party |
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Had a fantastic meeting with an agency here in Indianapolis who’s working to ensure their client has a solid corporate blogging strategy. They’re off to a great start and we spoke a lot about controversy and blogging. The particular blog they’re putting up discusses a subject that could draw criticism from those with opposing views.
I’ve watched several companies react to negative criticism by trying to reasonably defend or discuss their position on the opposing blog. Bad strategy. When you come to my blog to defend your position, you’re not simply debating me, you’re going to find yourself debating an army of like-minded followers who read my blog regularly.
Often, when a controversy starts on my blog, I’ll just settle in and wait. Typically, readers will come to my rescue and rip the person to shreds. This is what happens when you are provoked into taking the battle to the opposing team’s property. You’re not simply arguing with the blogger – you’re arguing with the network behind the blog. And as you argue, the attention increases… the social engagement grows, search increases and you find this opposing post on the results for your company.
Always bring the fight home. If a blogger writes about you or your business negatively, utilize your blog to respond. You need not even mention them… but a link back to their post will typically get their attention so that they see your response. Hopefully, they’ll come back to your blog and comment. Perhaps they know better! You should know better, too.
The only thing worse than a company responding directly on the opposition’s blog is not responding at all. In new media, no response is equated with hubris and a lack of authenticity. A blogger who doesn’t respond to constructive criticism is often dismissed as a fake… they’re not around to be transparent but only to promote themselves. Their company and their corporate blog lose credibility and readership.
Always bring the fight home!
This post was written by Douglas Karr
Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.
Did you know Douglas Karr's book is coming out in August? You can pre-order Corporate Blogging for Dummies now on Amazon. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.
Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.
Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!
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Posted in Blogging |
Tags: Army, Authenticity, Blog, Blogger, Constructive Criticism, Controversy, Corpo, Followers, Hubris, Indianapolis, Negative Criticism, Opposing Views, Opposition, Shreds, Social Engagement |
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I just wrote this question directly from my sidebar using the ChaCha.me widget with WordPress integration enabled on a custom profile built just for The Marketing Technology Blog.
In addition to WordPress (publishing via XML-RPC), your questions can also be published on your Facebook profile, Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter Account and even your Tumblr account! Blogger integration is coming next!
This is a fantastic means of opening your blog to questions from your visitors. Very cool!
Disclaimer: ChaCha is a client and I am assisting them directly with some of these features and social media integration as a whole.
Ask me anything, even anonymously
This post was written by ChaCha Questions
Use ChaCha to submit your Online Marketing questions to The Marketing Technology blog! This account utilizes the WordPress integration available at ChaCha.me. Ask us your question now!
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The Tuitive team is still trying to settle down after this year’s South By South West Interactive (SXSWi)
conference in March. We all had a great time and learned a lot about the interactive community and what is coming next. There were loads of interesting sessions from a panel with the Gmail team to
Cooking for Nerds, many of which have been popping up online. I wanted to share one of my favorites with you.
Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon by Jared Spool
Jared Spool is a leader in the User Experience world, specifically in the quantitative research space. He has been working with Amazon.com for many years, analyzing their traffic patterns and trying improve the user experience of Amazon shoppers. His talk had two major points.
1) He pointed out the interesting things that Amazon does with new features and constantly implementing tiny changes to improve the user’s experience.
2) He also discussed that you can’t do the same things as Amazon and expect to be successful.
Why can’t we all just copy Amazon? In one word “traffic.”
Amazon has had 71,431,000 visitors since December of 2008. They have served 76,000,000 customers since they launched. There are 24 orders placed every second. Does your website have those kind of traffic numbers? Mine either.
he best example Jared uses is user generated reviews. Most people find reviews to be very help when buying online, and the user reviews on Amazon are highly regarded. So why can’t you just add user reviews on you site? Jared cites research that shows having less than 20 reviews about a product does not actually help people decide if a product is what they want. In some cases it actually reduces the positive perception of the item. He continues to share that only about 1 in 1,300 purchasers actually write a review. Think about how many online reviews you have writen versus how many you have read. So in order to get those 20 reviews to help the sale of an item you will need to have 1.3 Million people buy an item. Whoa.
I encourage you to watch Jared’s presentation (see below). He is very clever and easy to listen to.
I also encourage you to make sure you are always improving your online products in ways that make the most sense for your particular site. Every site is different, it has different users and those users have different needs. There is no magic bullet feature for success online. The only way to ensure your success is listening to your users, and continually improving the tools they need to complete their tasks.
You can listen to Jared’s entire presentation, with audio, right here:
This post was written by Travis Smith
Travis was born and raised in a far off land called Nebraska, and after attending college in Missouri, he completed his MBA and Masters of Social Psychology at Ball State University. Travis has been many things, including a cameraman, tutor, disc jockey, underwriting salesman, barista, a nomadic tourist, librarian, sandwich artist, office manager, researcher, research subject, HR lackey, and project manager, all of which have prepared him for the role of User Experience Analyst. At Tuitive, he is in charge of user research, user testing, user modeling, requirements gathering, and keeping the human in human centered design.
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Tags: Amazon, Experience World, Great Time, Interactive Community, Interesting Things, Jared Spool, Nerds, New Features, One Of My Favorites, Perception, Quantitative Research, Research Space, S South, Share One, Shoppers, Tiny Changes, Traffic Numbers, Traffic Patterns, User Experience, West Interactive |
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Pat Coyle and Smaller Indiana nailed another fantastic event tonight with Ignite Indianapolis.
This is an enhanced view of the presentation I did. This presentation on Meetings has been coming for a while, I’ve written about meetings and productivity in the past. I’ve attended a ton of meetings, and a majority of them have been a terrible waste of time.
As I started my own business, I found that I allowed a lot of time to get sucked out of my schedule by meetings. I’m a lot more disciplined now. If I have work or projects to do, I begin canceling and rescheduling meetings. If you’re consulting for other companies, your time is all you have. Meetings can eat that time up quicker than almost any other activity.
In an economy where productivity must increase and resources are declining, you may want to take a closer look at meetings to find opportunities to improve both.
I’ve been on a reading streak lately and these books have really been inspiring to me regarding my business and my personal productivity – Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson’s Rework and Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. Each book tackles Meetings in them.
This post was written by Douglas Karr
Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.
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Tags: American Productivity, Blogging, Cash Giveaway, Closer Look, David Heinemeier Hansson, Ebook, Hour Workweek, Indianapolis, Jason Fried, Karr, Linchpin, Marketing Company, Marketing Technology, Own Business, Personal Productivity, Search Engine Optimization, Seo, Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Waste Of Time |
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One of the most effective techniques to move Random Strangers to Raving Fans is to use a “drip campaign”. In this process you identify a select group of people who fit a particular demographic, or better yet, share a common interest and send them messages. These messages can be email, voice mail, direct mail, or face to face.
A truely effective campaign provides information relevant to your target customer, comes in regular, but not annoying intervals, and moves the prospect toward a purchase decision.
Sometimes, however, over eager business owners or marketers try to accelerate the process, by sending too much information, too soon, or too often. The result? Exactly the opposite response, as your prospect not only fails to buy, they tell you to go away, permanently!
As an email marketer, I am usually pretty patient, but recently, Ratepoint wore out their welcome. How? Well it started innocently enough, with a postcard, an email and an offer for a free trial. Then there was the phone call during which I asked a few questions. Before the conversation ended I told them I was unlikely to use their product because I was a reseller for Constant Contact and their was no compelling reason for me to change.
Instead of taking the polite no, they moved me into an entirely different group and I became a prospect. There were more postcards, more email and more phone calls. As their sales people became increasingly annoying, demanding to know why I hadn’t activated my trial, I found it harder and harder to remain polite. (Lets face it, I am from NY and on a good day it is hard for me to remain polite)
If I would have ever considered trying their product, I am unlikely to now. The lesson? Too much marketing is not a good thing. If someone indicates they are not a prospect, let them opt out, and move on. Water may erode mountains, one drip at a time, but it won’t move someone to buy.
This post was written by Lorraine Ball
Lorraine Ball twenty years in corporate America, before she came to her senses. Today, you can find her at Roundpeg, a small marketing firm, based in Carmel, Indiana. Along with an extraordinarily talented team (which includes Bonnie the dog and Clyde the cat) she shares what she knows about marketing, networking, pr, social media and business planning. Committed to contributing to a vibrant entrepreneurial economy in Central Indiana, Lorraine is focused on helping small businesses, become big businesses.
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Tags: Business Owners, Chinese Torture, Chinese Water Torture, Constant Contact, Direct Mail, Drip, Intervals, Lorrain, Marketer, Marketers, Phone Call, Phone Calls, Postcard, Postcards, Purchase Decision, Random Strangers, Raving Fans, Select Group, Target Customer, Voice Mail |
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Artist and illustrator Nick Dewar passed away this week. He worked for many different companies from The Atlantic Monthly to Random House, providing insightful illustrations to the interesting words in an article or book. My favorite Nick Dewar work illustrates both my professional and personal philosophy:
Simplicity is the key to successful living.
This is a more professional and eloquent rephrasing of the time tested K.I.S.S. method:
No, not that KISS -
The K.I.S.S. principle – “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
These are both modern interpretations of Occam’s Razor, which states “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity,” or more generally, “the simplest strategy tends to be the best one.”
So why am I telling you this? Why am I dragging a 14th Century philosopher, Ace Frehley, and a newly deceased Scotsman onto a blog? Because in our fast-paced, high-tech, always-on society, we forget about trying to solve problems with simple solutions. Too often everyone is looking for a new technology or a new way to solve a problem when we can use simpler solutions that require little cost and provide better long-term benefits.
This philosophy speaks to features of products as well. Just because your product has more features does not mean it will meet the needs of your customers. If you don’t feel confident in your understanding of your customers’ needs, you have a larger, more fundamental problem than which features to implement. You need to better understand your users, your customers, and yourself. Don’t just treat the symptoms. Keep it simple, and find out what is really going on. And remember -
Simplicity is the key to successful living.
Oh, and also remember that KISS is pretty sweet too!
This post was written by Travis Smith
Travis was born and raised in a far off land called Nebraska, and after attending college in Missouri, he completed his MBA and Masters of Social Psychology at Ball State University. Travis has been many things, including a cameraman, tutor, disc jockey, underwriting salesman, barista, a nomadic tourist, librarian, sandwich artist, office manager, researcher, research subject, HR lackey, and project manager, all of which have prepared him for the role of User Experience Analyst. At Tuitive, he is in charge of user research, user testing, user modeling, requirements gathering, and keeping the human in human centered design.
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Tags: 14th Century, Ace Frehley, Attending College, Ball State University, Different Companies, Fundamental Problem, Illustrator, Interesting Words, New Technology, Nick Dewar, Personal Philosophy, Philosopher, Random House, Razor, Rephrasing, Scotsman, Simple Solutions, Simplicity, Social Psychology, Travis Smith |
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I’m beginning to think there are two kinds of internet marketers – those that are aware of conversion optimization and those that aren’t. Fortunately, the number of marketers that are aware of this key tool/process/methodology is quickly increasing. If you’re not familiar with the extreme power of conversion optimization on a website’s bottom line, check out the following:
- 151% more sales – Optimize Software
- 21% more signups – Gyminee
- 18.5% more revenue per visitor – Skype
- 22% more sales – BabyAge.com
- 113% more trial signups – BLR.com
- 24% more reoccurring monthly revenue – Grasshopper.com
- 32.5% more trial signups – SAP
- 25% more signups – Campaign Monitor
- 329% more auction bids – Skinner Auctions
- 8.5% more searches – MSN Real Estate
- 10% more ticket purchases – Delta
- 118% more contact form submissions (PDF) – Imaginary Landscape (via A/B Tests)
- 20% more trial signups – Less Accounting (via A/B Tests)
- 15% more sales – Get Defensive Driving School (via A/B Tests)
- 15% more account signups – YouTube (via A/B Tests)
- 200% more signups – Highrise HQ (via A/B Tests)
- 30% more signups – Highrise HQ (via A/B Tests)
In the coming weeks and months, I’ll spend more time talking about the details of conversion optimization and how to apply it to your site. In fact, I’ll be speaking Oct 21st at the Masters of Business Online conference in Indianapolis on conversion optimization for e-commerce. If you have any immediate questions about what conversion optimization is or how to do it, just post a comment and I’ll do my best to answer them!
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