The Art of Enchantment: How Guy Kawasaki Will Change Your Business
I recently interviewed Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop.com and the author of the bestselling book, The Art of the Start. His latest masterpiece is called Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions.
In this interview we talk about what makes for great content, how he came up with the title of his latest book, what Enchantment means for business, why businesses need to embrace nobodies and how he promoted his book. (Be sure to listen to the MP3 of this interview below.)
Mike: Most of our readers are marketers and business owners. Can you explain what Alltop does for them and why they might find it useful?
Guy: One of the functions of marketers, PR people and social media people is they need to keep on top of things.
The vision of Alltop was that we should aggregate RSS feeds for people by topic and create essentially an online magazine rack so that you could go to one place and say, “Okay, these are all the social media blogs and websites aggregated in one place.” It’s the five most recent stories from each source, and we give you a preview of the first paragraph of each story so you can see if you really want to click through. 
How to Turn Your Email Into a Social Media Hub With Posterous
In the world of social media, it’s easy to become overwhelmed in a sea of profiles and status updates. With so many services and so little time, wouldn’t it be nice if posting to your social media profiles was as simple as sending an email? With Posterous, it is.
Posterous allows you to post to 20 or so social media platforms via email. Posting to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, even YouTube and Picasa is as simple as sending an email. And we’re not talking simple text-based posts either.
With Posterous, you can create full-screen photo galleries, groups for sharing and collaborating or just simply pass on an article you read on the Internet all by sending an email. Add a smartphone and you’ve got a powerful way to create and share content on the road.
How to Create Compelling Blog Content
In this video I interview Chris Garrett, co-author of the best-selling book Problogger and the popular blog ChrisG.com.
Chris shares the foundation pieces you need to build a successful business blog and explains how to create killer content to engage your audience and get the results you want from blogging. Chris also talks about the role blogs play within a good social media ecosystem and how this helps you connect with your audience.
Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.
4 Steps to Podcasting Success
Are you thinking of becoming a podcaster? Are you curious about what it takes to become successful? If you answered yes, this article is for you.
Podcasting is like any other content medium. To both provide value and keep your audience returning, it’s best that you have a plan that maximizes your potential.
The most important feedback I can give potential (or current) podcasters is that you should take the medium seriously, possibly more seriously than you treat your blog. We’ll talk about why that is throughout this piece, but for now, I ask that you consider podcasting not as a way to get cheap traffic, but as a professional media outlet.
5 Steps to Achieving Success With Video Marketing
Have you been considering taking on video marketing in a larger way this year? If you’re looking to add video to your content offerings, this article is for you.
The following tips will help you understand how to get started with video.
#1: Select Your Video Marketer
A successful web video is personality-driven. Find someone who comes across as the most “social” on camera. Weigh in expertise, authenticity, personality and familiarity (with the audience). Look at his or her ability to be concise and clear, schedule and availability (to create and engage) and how well he or she can use social networking tools. The person should also be able to produce, publish and do social media optimization with video.
If you have the resources, hire more than one and you can assign different duties to different people and make up a new “video marketing team.”
When Consumers Revolt Against Traditional Marketing, What Should You Do?
When little-known, first-term Illinois senator Barack Obama faced Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign, he knew he couldn’t compete with her financially. He couldn’t afford telemarketing and direct mail campaigns or TV and radio advertising.
So instead of playing by the old rules, he made new rules. He started blogging and he created profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
He also hired the co-founder of Facebook, Chris Hughes, to be his Internet strategist. And he won the Democratic presidential nomination even though he spent a lot less money than his opponent.
At the time of the election, Obama had five million fans on Facebook—over four million more than Clinton. On MySpace, the numbers were approximately 800,000 and 200,000, respectively. On Twitter, he had over 100,000 followers and his opponent had about 5,000.
And he did all of that by following the principles of inbound marketing.
8 Ways to Find Great Social Media Content
Do you want to know how to find the most valuable social media content? Are you looking for great articles and videos to share with your friends and fans?
Be sure to watch this edition of Social Media Examiner TV with our host Mari Smith.
In this episode, Mari introduces you to the concept of curating content and how it can help your business. And Mari also reviews 8 content curation tools to help you find the best information for your business.
Share your feedback, see the show notes and discover how you can be part of a future show below!
26 Ways to Enhance Your Blog Content
Do you blog? Are you looking for actionable tips to improve your content?
What follows are 26 tips, from A-Z, related to the craft of blog writing and a number of critical factors that will help to ensure the production of high-quality posts.
#1: Attribution
“Links are the currency of the web,” writes Jonathan Bailey. “If you use someone else’s content, whether licensed directly or through fair use, it’s important to be sure to provide a clickable link to the original site if at all possible. This not only helps visitors to your site find the original work, but it also provides SEO benefits for the creator of the content and guards against your site being mistaken by the search engines as the original work.”
5 Steps to Starting Your Own Podcasting Show
Have you thought about podcasting? Does the idea of having your own Internet radio show sound exciting?
Podcasting has taken on new steam in recent years. Many individuals, from well-known celebrities to people like you and I have had achieved great success with podcasting.
This article will show you precisely what you need to know.
Is There Money in Podcasting?
According to Wikipedia, “A podcast (or non-streamed webcast) is a series of digital media files (either audio or video) that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication.”
When it first started, podcasting was probably ahead of its time. Though it arrived on the scene years ago, there was a time when people thought that the format was dead. My, how things have changed.
10 Top Business Blogs and Why They Are Successful
Does your business have a blog? Are you looking to generate engaging comments and new daily visitors? If so, look no further.
This article showcases 10 top blogs in multiple markets. Follow their lead to take your blog from good to great. And if you don’t have a business blog yet, now’s the perfect time to get in the game!
Each of these successful blog examples has incorporated unique features that have attracted thousands of readers. The great news is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel—just model the best. Take a look at these thriving blogs and apply the same success strategies to your own blog.
