Archive for October, 2011
The Secret of Good Writing
In these times of blogging and content marketing we can all be looking to beef up our writing skills. In the past I’ve mentioned that I subscribe to a free vocabulary builder newsletter, A Word A Day (AWAD). I recommend that you all go get a subscription at www.wordsmith.org.
One of my favorite features of AWAD is A Thought for Today, a daily quote on communications, life, human nature and other important topics. Today’s quote really grabbed me:
“The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or a new thing in an old way.” -Richard Harding Davis, journalist and author (1864-1916)
Finding an interesting way to discuss a topic that’s been fairly well hashed out will certainly make your writing – and you — stand out.
On the other hand when you’re trying to discuss a new idea, it helps people to understand it if you couch it in terms of an idea that’s already in their knowledge base.
We in Inbound Marketing have that challenge – as you can tell from the recent contest here to succinctly define IM. Lately I’ve found myself describing it as the opposite of traditional Outbound Marketing – print and broadcast ads, direct mail, telemarketing that get blocked by modern technology like TiVo/DVR, voicemail, Do Not Call lists, etc.
Or I’ll say that Inbound Marketing is an online ‘pull’ strategy as opposed to an offline ‘push strategy’.
How are you saying old and new things in your writing?
The image is from the flickr stream of sure2talk under creative commons license.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Keywords: Take Your SEO Clues From Reality
A Search for Siri vs Watson & Jeopardy Brought My Post to Google Page One
What really brings us up on page one of Google search results? I just took a look at my blog analytics. As I frequently am, I was surprised at what people typed into the Google search field that brought my blog up on page one – out of hundreds of thousands to millions of results. For almost none of these specific search terms did I set out to optimize my posts. But, nonetheless, they came up.
The lesson is that no matter how hard we work on our SEO, the people searching will determine by their searches if they land on our pages. The further reality is that we may or may not ultimately be relevant to what they’re looking for – but we never know.
It’s just a good thing to temper our SEO efforts with an understanding that there are infinite queries that can bring us to someone’s attention. This to me is what’s so exciting about marketing online!!! It’s the ultimate in interactivity with our audiences, and the possibilities are endless.
Here are the searches that brought me up on page one today– plus the url’s for the actual posts that came up with the search results. How relevant do you think my posts might have been to the queries?
- siri Watson http://bit.ly/rMKrdw (same for all of the Watson siri queries)
- siri vs Watson
- watson vs siri jeopardy
- watson siri
- siri versus Watson
- how are apple’s siri and ibm’s watson the same and different?
- siri vs. Watson
- how to identify key messages http://bit.ly/slp4f7
- respect and listening lessons http://bit.ly/swDGrt
- jazz manager ken Blanchard http://bit.ly/vXTYyP
- emily post etiquette social networking tips http://bit.ly/srjnwa
Proud to Be Googled
Will what you post online make you proud to be googled?
If we’re marketing online, then I think the goal should be simple. We should strive to always be proud to be googled. After awhile of building an online presence, we have bios and profiles posted all over the web.
Not only that, somewhere our tweets live on – even if Google isn’t indexing them anymore. Wherever we’ve commented on blogs, it’s there to be served up in response to simple queries that include our names, our urls, our companies and any other identifiers or keywords that pull up something we’ve posted or contributed to online.
The fun of marketing online – and what keeps me writing blog posts at the end of the work-a-day – is that you never know where what you put into the cyber world will end up. It’s exciting!
The whole history of my career in PR and online marketing is on the Web. Press releases for clients. Milestones in my agency. Columns I write. Blog posts. Comments here and there. Guest posts. Media coverage.
It doesn’t matter one iota what I say about myself. Everything I’ve done is there to be found, there to be seen by anyone who types my name or company name into a search field. It provides credibility. She says she writes columns? Oh yes. There’s her column.
Whenever I post something online, I say to myself, “If I tell someone to google me and this comes up in the SERPs, how will I feel about it? What will it say about me to someone who doesn’t know me and is thinking of hiring me?”
My clients and I are building our businesses on the web. None of us is perfect and we may all exercise an occasional lack of judgment about something we post. It can happen.
But why not build our online personae in a way that is both authentic and that we can be proud of…that we can say, “Here’s my bio, but if you want the bigger picture, google me!”
By the way…follow the link if you’re interested in how Inbound Marketing can generate online leads.
The image is by y0mbo under Creative Commons license.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 6 so far )Watson, Meet Siri! Power Couple Marching Down the Aisle to the Semantic Web
Digital Power Couple IBM's Watson and Apple's Siri are Marching Down the Aisle to the Semantic Web
The first few posts I read about the new Apple iPhone 4s pre- and immediately-post-launch were pretty tepid and ho-hum post-Steve Jobs dismissals. This is why I rarely pay attention when the tech avant garde makes its first pronouncements about a new product release. Turns out that hiding in the new iPhone is some game-changing technology.
Over the next couple of days the word/name Siri started to creep into my conscious as something that might just be interesting about the new version after all. Finally, David Pogue wrote in the New York Times about four new things the iPhone 4s does, the last of which made the hairs on the back of my neck tingle with excitement.
He wrote about ‘Thing 4’ that it is: “Speech recognition. Crazy good, transformative, category-redefining speech recognition.” He was referring to Siri — a software functionality from a little company that Apple acquired in 2010.
Apparently Siri builds on another voice recognition software, Dragon, that’s been available on iPhones since 2009. Dictate using Dragon and your voice converts to text, subject to the occasional glitch.
What got my attention – and what made Pogue go wild about Siri — is that ‘she’ is billed as a virtual assistant that understands fairly complex commands and questions. But what’s fabulous is that ‘she’ answers questions and provides information in a contextual way.
You can read Pogue’s column, but here are some examples that he gave:
“You can say, “Wake me up at 7:35,” or “Change my 7:35 alarm to 8.” You can say, “What’s Gary’s work number?” Or, “How do I get to the airport?” Or, “Any good Thai restaurants around here?” Or, “Make a note to rent ‘Ishtar’ this weekend.” Or, “How many days until Valentine’s Day?” Or, “Play some Beatles.” Or, “When was Abraham Lincoln born?””
“In each case, Siri thinks for a few seconds, displays a beautifully formatted response and speaks in a calm female voice,” Pogue added.
The idea of the Semantic Web – sometimes called Web 3.0 – fascinates me as it will provide the next advances in communications between humans and computers. If you’d like to know more, check out my post from back in the late winter when I blogged about IBM’s new computer Watson ‘who’ blew away top contestants on a much-publicized match on the TV show Jeopardy.
Watson and Siri promise to be part of a new DNA line of computer technology. What do you imagine or hope we’ll be able to do in computing or online when their offspring come of age and we can converse with our computers and mobile devices?
By the way…follow the link if you’re interested in how Inbound Marketing can generate online leads.
The image is from Neal under Creative Commons license.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Help Crowd-Source an Inbound Marketing Definition (There’s a Prize)
Question: What's the Definition of Inbound Marketing? Thanks for sharing your answer!
Can you succinctly describe Inbound Marketing? Do you have an idea but are not quite certain? Would you like to know more about what it is? Do you have absolutely no idea, but would be willing to take a stab at explaining it anyway?
Then this is the post for you! You just have to be prepared to share your take on Inbound Marketing in the comments. There’s a prize involved. Read on.
Why am I looking for a definition? I talk to companies about Inbound Marketing every day and each time I try to find the tidiest way to help people get it. I’m a pretty darned good communicator – been doing it professionally and successfully for decades. I’ve explained lots of complex concepts and technologies.
But Inbound Marketing seems tougher for some reason. Maybe it’s because people think they know what it is, and are resistant to accepting that there’s more to it. Eventually people understand, but given today’s short attention spans, we need a short explanation. Time is of the essence!
I’ve checked out Inbound Marketing groups on LinkedIn, the websites of fellow Inbound Marketing agencies, HubSpot’s website and Wikipedia, which was able to shed light on an earlier sense of Inbound/Outbound Marketing that I encountered once trying to explain it to a software company product development executive.
So far I’ve found nothing that encompasses all the parts and benefits of today’s Inbound Marketing in a way that’s quickly understandable. I’ve blogged about how people don’t get it. I’ve wracked my own brain for a tight definition and come up with something that I’m trying out in my networking groups and to audiences I’m speaking to in the near future. But I have a feeling I can do better.
So I decided to reach out to the online community of all stripes to see if we can crowd source something that works. There’s a prize for the best definition: A copy of Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, co-founders of HubSpot. Brian coined the phrase Inbound Marketing.
Let’s have at it. I’m passionate about Inbound Marketing, know it works and want more companies to get it and buy in, so that they can start reaping the benefits. Plus we can have some fun!
Let’s get all the help we can. Please share everywhere!!
The image is from the photostream of tj scenes on Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Steve Jobs: A brief reflection on a bright life
In Tribute to Steve Jobs
Today a musical post to accompany the words. Steve Jobs was a huge Beatles fan – and so one of the most beautiful love songs ever written, “Here, There and Everywhere” from the iconic 1966 album, “Revolver”.
A sad loss like we experienced with the death of Steve Jobs this week, makes me think more about life – and love. Here is what the brilliant love of my life Jeff Levine has come to believe over his life of helping people to understand theirs: “We’re here to love, and to love is to give.”
If we reflect on Steve Jobs’ life from this perspective and what he’s given to the world, we can rightfully say that he was one of the most loving people to have ever walked the planet.
The beautiful tribute image is from Flickr photo stream of Daniel2005 under Creative Commons license.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Blogging: Why Wouldn’t You Do Something That Works?
Blogging Opens Doors
Why would you not do something guaranteed to bring people to your website and introduce your company’s expertise and offerings? There are so many marketing efforts people chase that cost time and money with no guarantee that they’ll yield anything. So, I ask again…Why wouldn’t you spend a few hours a week on an activity guaranteed to pay off?
I’m talking about blogging. I guarantee you that when I write and publish this post today, I will get traffic. And I’ll get more traffic than yesterday when I didn’t post. I get traffic to my blog every day when I’m posting at least three times a week.
Some of it comes from publicizing the posts on social media. But lots of it comes from organic search – people searching online for topics represented in keywords contained in the posts — and they find me.
I almost talked myself out of posting today in favor of other things that require my attention. But I prioritized getting a post out – regardless of how short. Because I know it will get results. It will provide opportunities for new relationships and potential business.
That feels great to me and I hope that sharing this with you will be motivating and helpful. Success feels great. Blog for success!
Image from Ben Zvan under Creative Commons license.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 5 so far )
New PR Words - and Music! 