Inbound Marketing
Recharging
Last night I downloaded the WordPress app for Android. I wasn’t going to post today but decided to see how it works and how much of a pain it is to write a blog post on the Droid keyboard. A bit.
Jeff and I are at his house in Nyack NY sitting on a bench next to a beautiful pond and waterful he created. I’m writing this over a second cup of coffee. I don’t feel like thinking about business so I’ll test my new app by sharing a few words on recharging.
After a full work week, it feels particularly joyful to be sitting here with my love on a perfect early summer day at the beginning of the long Fourth of July weekend. A few minutes ago a fat little brown frog jumped out of the pond to keep us company as he basks on one of the flat stones around his watery home. If I can figure how or if I can upload an image here, I’ll share a picture oh him or her.
There’s an assortment of birds, too, darting in and out of bushes and trees adding animation against the sound track of falling, splashing water. Later we’ll jump on the Harley and explore some back roads before cleaning up to drive 30 minutes into NYC to hear some great jazz.
When it comes to recharging my creative batteries, nature and music do it every time. How are you recharging this weekend?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Today Ken Blanchard Followed Me: How Social Media Builds Influence
This will be a short post as I try to head out for the Fourth of July weekend at least a bit before traffic. I wasn’t going to post, but as I finished up my last task or two at the computer, I saw an email come in from Twitter. It informed me that Ken Blanchard @kenblanchard – author of 50 books, including the One Minute Manager — is following me.
Follow Ken Blanchard @kenblanchard
I don’t follow him yet. He followed me first. ;-D
As of the time the email arrived, Ken Blanchard had 24,594 followers and was only following 4,046 – including me.
It took me just a minute to figure out the chain of connection that led to this follow. My friend Peter Cook is an incredibly creative management consultant, rock musician and founder of the corporate training companyAcademyofRock in the UK. He’s the author of a well-regarded book, Sex, Leadership & Rock ‘n’ Roll: Lessons from the AcademyofRock. Author Tom Peters (in Search of Excellence) wrote a testimonial for the front cover. I really like how Peter thinks and have blogged about him recently.
Peter and I met in a LinkedIn group, Jazz in Business and hit it off on a number of levels – not the least of which was music. We subscribed to each others’ blogs, follow each other on Twitter and engage in a number of mutually supportive ways – re-tweeting, commenting, etc. We’ve recommended each other in Follow Friday #FF tweets.
From Peter’s recommendations of people to follow, I began following Tom Peters and author Kevin Eikenberry. Kevin has a venture with a couple of others called Bud to Boss. They began following me the other day as a group and individually. I followed back.
As I extended my community beyond the social media crowd and focused more on what the conversations are around business management, I began getting numbers of followers in that community. I’ve also stepped up my blogging and engagement in social media and have raised my visibility.
Morals of the post: Six degrees of separation is extra true online. Engage actively in social media among people with whom you share interests and values. Widen your circles. Share generously of your knowledge and support the efforts of others. The world – including famous authors and just plain great people — will find their way to your door.
I’m going to go and follow Ken Blanchard back now and send him a DM thanking him for the follow!
Please share your six degrees of separation stories in the comments. And for my fellow Americans – Happy Fourth!! See you back here after the holiday!
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )College of Online Marketing: A Never-ending Curriculum
No Graduation at College of Online
I just spent 30 minutes getting up to speed on the Google+ Project announced yesterday – Google’s new social media network, currently in a limited field trial. It’s quite interesting and I’ll explore it further with you as it rolls out to everyone.
The point of this post, though, is that when it comes to keeping up with online/inbound marketing, we need to commit to constant and continuous education. Not a day goes by that I don’t learn about a new tool, app, initiative, issue or trend related to marketing and interacting on the Internet.
It’s exhilarating and sometimes exhausting to be part of such a rapidly evolving profession. But the benefits that Web-based technology can bring my clients – especially small businesses – make it worth burning the midnight oil or rising at summer dawn to read the latest information.
If you’re a business trying to figure out how to market your company online, it’s a good idea to get some background information – even if you are or will be working with an agency or consultant. Here’s a 101 class, a few best-selling books to read and blogs to follow – in addition to this one — that will help you understand how to best use the Web for your marketing.
- “The New Rules of Marketing & PR,” by David Meerman Scott. Clients of mine are currently reading this and it’s fun to see the lights going on for them as they learn why we’re better off putting resources into blogging than newspaper advertising.
- “Real-Time Marketing & PR,” the latest from David Meerman Scott.
- “Inbound Marketing,” by HubSpot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, the guys who defined and automated the inbound marketing process.
- “Trust Agents,” by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, the bible for understanding how and why the Web can help you build influence, improve your reputation and earn trust.
All of the above are published by John Wiley and Sons. Even if you’ve read them before, they bear perusing again from time to time.
In the blog/online media department, I regularly read:
- Mashable (General Tech/Web News and Trends)
- Huffington Post Tech (General Tech/Web News and Trends)
- TechCrunch (General Tech/Web News and Trends)
- SEOmoz (Latest in SEO)
- Chris Brogan (‘Human Business’)
- Technorati (Blogs and Blogging)
- HubSpot (Inbound Marketing)
Another important source of information for me is my online marketing community on Twitter. Follow me, see some of the people I follow, and check out my lists. You can take advantage of the news links they tweet every day.
So welcome to the College of Online Marketing, Class of Forever. Graduation day is not in the picture – unless the Big Power Outage comes. As long as it doesn’t, let’s consider ourselves online marketing lifelong learners.
What are your favorite sources for keeping up with the evolution of the Internet? Thanks for sharing!
Photo by J.o.h.n.Walker under Creative Commons License
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Writing as Conversation: 7 Do’s and 7 Don’ts to Find Your Voice
In previous posts I’ve mentioned my daily email vocabulary builder, A Word A Day (www.wordsmith.org). It’s free and if you’re blogging and trying to spiff up your writing, I recommend you sign up. A Word A Day also includes a Thought for Today, a wise quote from a variety of sources. This morning’s quote inspired this post.
“Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.” -Laurence Sterne, novelist and clergyman (1713-1768)
Writing as Conversation
I love the idea of writing as conversation. Straight from the 18th century comes a concept as fresh as though it were communicated for the first time in 2011. Contrary to the sales-y communications of traditional advertising, or the corporate-speak of the last generation (and in some cases the current generation) of company websites, or the overly-nuanced language of press releases, writing in a social, Web 2.0 world calls for a different – and conversational — style.
As I’m writing this, I’m thinking about you and wondering what you might have to contribute on this topic. Also, I’m hoping that you will add to it. We’re all learning new tools and new tactics everyday. So conversing to pool our knowledge, experience and wisdom is a very good thing.
When we communicate verbally, though, it’s easier to have our personalities come through. In addition to the visual cues in-person talk provides, it’s somehow more spontaneous when words spill from our lips and don’t require fingers on keyboards lagging behind a thought process.
Nonetheless, we’re all communicating in writing all the time these days – especially in emails, on blogs and on social media sites. So please allow me to offer a few thoughts about finding an authentic voice for written conversation.
- Do write as though you were speaking.
- Don’t over think the first draft. You can – and should – always go back and edit.
- Do share occasional personal thoughts, perceptions and experiences when they serve to illustrate a point.
- Don’t go overboard with personal info. Learn to walk a line that offers an authentic peek at who you are, while retaining a business-like decorum.
- Do use interesting words and turns of phrase.
- Don’t use industry jargon — and no off-color language.
- Do try for humor at moments that can benefit from a bit of lightening up or to poke fun at yourself for some human foible that anyone can relate to.
- Don’t make jokes at someone’s expense – including your own. Leave sarcasm and snark out of the equation. It’s not attractive.
- Do be polite. Welcome your readers, acknowledge them and thank them.
- Don’t be overly-solicitous; it’s not credible. Invite disagreement.
- Do be a cheerleader for others. Use your content to include their ideas and praise their achievements.
- Don’t promote your own stuff exclusively
- Do listen for what’s important to your audience/s.
- Don’t assume you know what’s important to others. Asking questions is divine.
And so I’ll conclude with this question…
How have you found your conversational writing voice?
Photo by Kris Hoet Under Creative Commons License
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 8 so far )The Thrill of Possibility, or Why I Love the Web
One of the main reasons I’ve always loved my career in public relations and marketing is the sense of possibility that pervades the practice. You start with nothing but an idea and you turn it into a campaign that can make something happen that would not have happened otherwise. Every time I’ve ever distributed a press release I’ve had the thought, “OK. Now let’s see what happens.”
Now that we work over the web, the anticipation and excitement of possibility is exponentially greater. With each tweet, blog post, social media release, Facebook post, new web page, free ebook offer, video on YouTube, each and every piece of content created, there is the possibility that life will change in some way. It’s a very motivating thought.
Here’s a short list of opportunities that have arisen or things that have changed in my life and the lives of others thanks to what we’ve created online:
I joined the Jazz in Business group on LinkedIn to connect two passions and met a business consultant/author/speaker/musician from the UK– Peter Cook. We’re networking across the web and learning more about each other’s capabilities. Despite geographic distance I believe that our friendship will lead to business some time in the future. Follow him on Twitter – @academyofrock
. Or buy his terrific book on Amazon.
A friend made the commitment a year ago to blog every day. Not only did he grow traffic to his blog more than 10-fold, but last week received a book offer from a publisher who’d been reading his posts.
On LinkedIn I reconnected with a PR colleague who moved to another state a few years ago. The next week she introduced me to a business lead.
One Friday afternoon I dashed off a blog post that was selected for the WordPress Freshly Pressed home page feature out of some half-a-million posts that day. Almost two thousand new people visited my blog as a result, a number of whom became and remain subscribers. A shout-out to all of you. Thanks for reading!
A couple of years ago I created a hashtag #notatsxsw in jealousy of all those who were tweeting from the South By Southwest Festival in Austin with the hashtag #atsxsw. Immediately I got replies from a group of young #socialmedia folks in Chicago who were sitting around having a few drinks and lamenting that they weren’t there either. We began following each other. One guy @joshhersh – @joshicago – just launched an online business www.daycation.com – @mydaycation – which I was pleased to help him promote to my various communities.
Relationships I’ve built on Twitter and elsewhere have led to invitations for guest posts on significant websites – expanding my reach far beyond my own communities.
These are just a few business relationships and opportunities that have resulted from embracing the possibilities of the web. However sometimes the pay-off is REALLY life changing.
Almost six years ago I sent a quick email to a guy who had a wonderful profile on match.com — and found Jeff Levine www.levinecounseling.com the love of my life!
Who knows what might happen when I hit the publish button for this post. But I’m excited about the possibilities!!!!!!!
What are some of the interesting things that have resulted from your online efforts?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Your Fabulous Face! Where is it?
We wouldn’t put bags over our heads to go to a party. But those who don’t provide an online photo in their content or social media interactions are performing the digital equivalent. The nature of social is that it’s not anonymous.
Here’s what prompted this post. This morning I had a few emails from Twitter announcing new followers. Two of them had the default Twitter egg icon where a photo of the person should have been.
Now, I always check out the profiles of people who follow me to see if their tweets are interesting to me and add to my knowledge or extend my reach to a particular community or network. If so, I’ll follow back.
However, when the Twitter email shows an egg next to the Twitter handle, I rarely do. I like seeing who I might be creating a social media relationship with.
After checking out the Twitter follow invitations with photos, I went over to Linked In to look at the list of suggested folks I might want to invite to connect. There were so many blank spaces next to names where photos should have been. That means that there was no photo on those people’s profiles either. I found myself sending invitations only to people I could see.
In one of those moments where you say, how come I didn’t think of this before, it dawned on me that lots of people still don’t understand the importance of a photo in social media – or simply don’t know how to get one up there – and maybe I could be helpful to them by writing a post about the importance of photos.
If your fabulous face is already online, great. Please pass this along to any friends who may still be faceless. If you don’t have a photo online do it today. If you’re concerned that it’s too time consuming to upload a photo for every blog you comment on, social media site you join or the many other online activities you engage in, I’m going to make it easy for you.
Just go get a gravatar – a Globally Recognized Avatar. Navigate to www.gravatar.com, open a free account – which takes a minute or two — upload the photo you want to use to represent you online and voila!! In a short while, your gravatar will follow you all over the web – almost wherever you go.
Just a couple of tips – use a head shot – not a full body image. Your gravatar will appear as a thumbnail and full body shots can barely be seen. Make it friendly. Smile!! Unless you’re creating a gravatar for a business where a company logo would be appropriate, use your own face. Not a cute picture of your puppy or your favorite flower or whatever.
Aside from being more social, the best reason to get a gravatar on line is that a picture is more memorable than an online handle. In fact, you may have numbers of online handles – but you only have one face. Your gravatar becomes your individual logo. As you leave your mark around the internet, you’ll become a recognizable Brand You!
By the way…today’s musical post is That Face, written and sung by Alan Bergman, half of a legendary composing duo with his wife Marilyn – for whom he wrote the song and won her heart!!!
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Centerpiece of a Successful Inbound Marketing Plan: A Proven Process
Two posts ago I promised to talk about having an online marketing plan. I got distracted but am now tracking back to this important topic. Part of the post will be about Hubspot, the Boston company that has embraced inbound marketing and made its mission to help businesses – including mine – coordinate and analyze their rather complex inbound marketing activities.
In honor of Hubspot – the centerpiece of my inbound marketing plan — I’m offering a musical post – my old friend, jazz scat singer and ‘hipster’ Giacomo Gates singing the Harry “Sweets” Edison tune Centerpiece, with lyrics by Jon Hendricks. Onward!
Many small to mid-size businesses (SMSB) are confused about online/inbound marketing. They think that if they’re on Facebook and/or other social media they’re good to go. Or they’ll go out and hire an SEO agency to get them higher in search results. Let’s say that all builds traffic. Then what??
Traffic doesn’t help unless you convert it to leads and nurture leads to convert them to customers – or better, advocates for your company. Generating traffic is only the first top-of-the-sales-funnel step to building business using the web. And let’s agree that the web is our best chance for growth.
It helps to have a good strategic grasp of the big picture, a process and a plan. Or you may expend a lot of effort in online activities, but with no clear idea of how or whether it will help you get to your business goals. Even I whose business is helping others build their web presence have struggled with my own efforts. We haven’t been doing this stuff all that long, after all. Read this recent blog post and you’ll see what I mean. A process and plan definitely help.
I remember complaining to Hubspot founder and CEO Brian Halligan – who practically invented inbound marketing with his partner Dharmesh Shah – that I know Hubspot works and believe in the process, but time was so tight and I was hoping to do it soon – on and on.
Brian listened to my excuses and with a big grin on his face said, “Get with the program, girl. You just have to commit to it and do it.” Well, he was so cute and he’s so brilliant that I couldn’t argue with his advice. I didn’t even mind that he called me ‘girl’. He got away with it, I got with the program. And so can you!!!
However you decide to pursue building your business online, you have to put a plan in place that addresses the following:
- Get found
- Convert
- Analyze
Each of these pieces has a number of moving parts and choices to make.
Getting Found
To get found, you have to build great searchable content. Blogging works best. You have to optimize your site and the content you create. That’s where SEO comes in as a supporting player. Not a be-all-end-all.
Convert
To convert the traffic you’ll build, you’ll want to offer useful content in exchange for contact info. At first, when a potential buyer is in the information gathering stage or they don’t know your company yet, maybe all they’ll be willing to give for your content is an email address. That’s fine. Keep cranking out helpful content and eventually they’ll be willing to give more in return.
At this point you can nurture the relationship with emails or even phone calls – more direct interactions. The better relationship you build, the better chance you’ll make the sale when your prospect is ready.
Case in point is my relationship with Hubspot. I partook – and still do — of the incredible volume of content they produce – often feeling like an absolute glutton – until I pulled the trigger and became a customer. In the interest of full disclosure, as an inbound marketing consultant, I’m also a Hubspot Partner and Reseller.
Analyze
The most critical aspect of your online marketing plan is analytics. Hopefully you use a web analytics program. Google Analytics is very robust — and free. So no excuses. Google keeps adding features so that you can track most of your online existence these days. If you don’t measure what’s working and what’s not, you can’t refine your online plan to the make the best use of your time and budget. None of us small/medium company entrepreneurs have anything to waste – so measure.
I promise you can make progress toward your revenue goals if you first understand the process of inbound marketing, choose the right tools/tactics and analyze your activities. You’ll be accountable to your prospects, customers AND your bottom line with a process as the centerpiece of your plan.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )How to Succeed Online – But Not Without Trying
The other night I watched the Tony Awards. I’m really not a fan of awards shows, but living not far from The Great White Way, the Tonys give me a preview of what I might want to grab tickets for. What do the Tonys have to do with online marketing? Nothing, really, but one of the featured shows sparked my thinking for this post.
I’ve considered seeing “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” I saw the original with Robert Morse and the last revival with Matthew Broderick. So I wanted to watch a number from the current revival starring Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe.
Daniel Radcliffe needs Wizarding Ways to Succeed in Online Marketing Without Trying
As I waited for the segment, I thought about how many people I’d spoken with about inbound marketing during the business week who said, “Yes, but isn’t that a lot of work?” If the name of the show were “How to Succeed Online Without Really Trying,” Mr. Radcliffe would be wise to hang on to his wizarding ways. Because that just doesn’t happen in the real world.
Using your web presence to build revenues entails an array of efforts. But so did a well integrated traditional marketing program when people didn’t have voice mail, tiVo and other ways to avoid the marketing messages we pushed out. When it comes to online marketing, I think that people still don’t feel comfortable with the some of its elements. Maybe they’ll pick one or two things like being on Facebook or LinkedIn. But that’s not enough.
It starts with understanding your customers, recognizing that they’re already online – and that’s where you have the best chance to connect with them. Of course you have to do a bit of homework to find out where on line they are. The Internet’s a big place after all (World Wide Web, remember?)
But the Web is also a very searchable place; so finding them is do-able. Then you have to attract them, give them reasons to trust you and respect your knowledge, and be the company they turn to when they’re ready to buy.
It is a process that takes a lot of work – although it’s not as much as many may imagine. You may have to do some things that fall outside your comfort zone, like write a blog on a regular basis, or share your expertise in Twitter tweets. But I’m sure that the added revenues will more than make up for the time investment. Once you buy into the logic and have a plan, you can succeed. You just have to try!
Now having a plan and a system is the key concept here. I’ll talk more about that in the next post.
Do you have an online marketing plan? If not, what are your roadblocks??
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )Blogging Lessons from Dumas: More Words = More Money
Yikes! It’s the last day of May and to my horror I recognize that I haven’t yet posted to my blog this month. Yesterday something I read really got me focused on this.
For years I’ve subscribed to a great free vocabulary builder called A Word a Day. (It also includes an often-inspiring Thought for the Day.) Monday’s word usage example was from an article in the Christian Science Monitor by Erik Spanberg about Alexandre Dumas’ the Count of Monte Cristo. Spanberg explained that Dumas’ tendency to be wordy – even overly wordy – was “induced by the simple formula that the more he wrote, the more money he made.”
Fast forward to our online world and the formula holds true in spades. Hubspot — which put the oomph in Inbound Marketing — has done research that shows that businesses that blog get 55% more website traffic. And the more you blog the more traffic you get and the more opportunities to convert visitors to leads who will become customers by and by with proper nurturing.
Indeed I teach this to my clients and spend chunks of my billable time helping them to post regularly. All of a sudden I find myself suffering from Shoemaker’s Child Syndrome. I know for a fact that my business will grow faster if I blog more, yet here I am scrambling to not have a goose egg next to my May archives.
It’s not that I don’t write. I co-author an article every month for WestFair Online and its Fairfield and Westchester County Business Journals. I began writing for Technorati this month and provided a guest post to Network Solutions. These kinds of efforts definitely contribute to a broader web presence which is good for getting found. But more consistent blogging will get me more traffic faster and – more important – provide better value to you the subscriber.
So, how did I get into this non-posting mode? In all honesty, the way I positioned my blog – as a music as well as information/experience-sharing venue – has made it difficult to be as spontaneous as I need to be to post more. As much as I love selecting just the right tune from my jazz collection to share with you as you read, it’s very time consuming and I don’t often have the time anymore.
With this post I’m changing the model. The blog is still called New PR Words and Music, and I’ll still share music with you whenever I have the leisure. But when I’m pressed for time – which is most days – you’ll get words and images. I vow to do my best to make them helpful for you and your business.
Many entrepreneurs have proved that trial and error — and flexibility – pave the path to success. What have you changed about your business or your life in general that’s helped you to do better?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Letting it go: Accepting that we only control so much
To accompany a holiday-time post about accepting what’s out of our control in order to live productively, enjoy listening to jazz pianist Oscar Peterson’s take on ‘Let it Snow!’. Vibes player Dave Samuels gives it a tropical feel. Heading south anyone?
One year ago I was looking forward to 2010. The end of 2008 and most of 2009 had been really tough in the crisis economy. I had taken the enforced ‘downtime’ to change direction, learn, re-think my business and career, work out frequently and get very fit. In effect, I worked on controlling what I could control.
Come January 2010, I hit the ground running with new collaborators, a new set of ideas and tools to offer clients — and optimism. 2010 turned out to be a year of accomplishment.
Fortunately, the economy improved enough that some other hearty souls decided to launch a new business or expand one. Some of these fellow optimists became clients.
I’ve worked steadily all year helping these clients build their Web presence through inbound marketing. For most, we’ve started by creating or re-doing a website so that it can support interactive functions. You have to walk before you can run.
Out with the old. In with the new.
As we’re about to ring out 2010 and welcome 2011, I have to – once again — admit shock that it’s flown by so fast. Come January 2011, I’m going to hit the ground jogging. I’m assessing how to take my own business and my clients’ to the next level. With great foundations in place, we’ll all be very busy.
I’m writing goals for me and my clients. We’re in a technological world that keeps evolving faster and faster. No one has all the answers. This year I feel inclined to take it a bit slower.
Adrenaline was helpful. In a way it’s more difficult this year when much is already in place. But I’m even more optimistic. My vision of what I can control is different but it’s becoming clear.
I’m assessing the foundations built in 2010 and what they will support in the coming year.
I’m hoping that you’re also thinking about you and your business about now: How to give up what’s in the environment that you can’t control and keep moving ahead. What are you planning for 2011?
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New PR Words - and Music! 