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How Content and Social Media Equal Marketing Success

Michael Stelzner — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:00:44 +0000

In this video I interview Joe Pulizzi, author of Get Content, Get Customers. Joe is an expert in the world of content.

Listen to Joe explain why you must have a content marketing strategy before you have a social media strategy. Joe connects the dots between content and social media. Be sure to check out the takeaways below.

Here’s what you’ll pick up in this video for your content marketing strategy:

How to take your sales hat off and put on the publishing hat on
Why you need something interesting to say to say
Download the Content Playbook (it’s free) to find 42 different content tactics you can use
What you need to do first before you write your report
How to add social tools in your content strategy
Why you need to know where your customers are hanging out online
How to get the most bang on your buck for your content marketing strategy
What content works best on social media
What’s changing today with regards to content marketing

Learn more about Joe Pulizzi on his webiste. And check out Junta42 which brings together content experts and businesses to build great content strategies.

Do you use content as part of your social media marketing? How is it working? If not, what is holding you back? Please leave your comments in the box below.

3 Simple Ways to Repurpose Your Blog Posts for More Exposure

Denise Wakeman — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:00:58 +0000

How many ways are you leveraging your blog posts?

Most people write a post and that’s the end of it. You’re probably syndicating your blog feed to the usual places: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, at the very least. And that’s a good thing.

Yet there are many other ways to get more mileage out of your content.

As discussed in one of my prior articles, content syndication is just one part of the equation. But to really get the most leverage from your blog, think about how many ways you can repurpose the content (and then syndicate the new formats to all the usual sites).

Repurposing your content means turning your blog posts into different formats like reports, white papers, articles, slide shows, videos, podcasts, teleseminars, ebooks, etc.

Why Repurpose Content?

It may come as a shock, but not all your ideal clients know about or read your blog! There are people in your target audience hanging out on other sites all over the web. People are looking for information to read, share and learn from, and you want them to find you and your solutions.

When you publish content on your blog, you’re most likely providing valuable, relevant information that demonstrates how you solve the problems of your ideal client or customer.

While having that content on your blog is a great place to start, there are many more prospects you can reach by simply repurposing the content in a few ways and distributing that content on other platforms.

You get more exposure and more value from the time you’ve initially invested in creating the content. Not to mention that you can drive more traffic back to your home base.

What You Need to Know

There is some preparation required when repurposing and distributing your content on multiple sites. First, you must set up accounts on the sites you want to use for distribution. Always fill out your profile completely, along with adding your picture when you can.

Also I recommend creating a template you can use to hand this project off to an assistant. For every new post you repurpose, you’ll need to have the following information handy: title, short description and keywords. This should be fairly simple to pull from the original post. Now you’re ready to go.

Let’s look at three simple ways to repurpose your blog posts that don’t require a lot of time or technical know-how: articles, PDFs and audio.

#1: Reformat for Article Directory Sites

This is the simplest and fastest way to repurpose your blog posts.

If your posts are about 500-1000 words, this is a great way to get in front of millions of additional eyeballs. While there are dozens, if not hundreds, of article directory sites, two stand far above the rest and will do the job for you: EzineArticles.com and IdeaMarketers.com.

Upload your repurposed blog post to EzineArticles.com to get in front of 30,000,000 monthly visitors.

Both sites have been around for years, have millions of monthly visitors and are easy to use. Both have the option to upgrade a free account to a paid account so you can get faster approval and featured status, but you can get great exposure without the investment.

When you submit your content, you may want to tweak the title and make sure the content is not overly self-promotional. EzineArticles will reject articles with promotional links in the body.

You’ll also need to create an Author Resource box with contact info, a call to action and a link back to your blog or landing page.

Both sites give you the option to have links to your new articles syndicated to your social sites.

#2: Reformat for Document-sharing Sites

Document-sharing sites cater to those who want to share and read documents as PDF, Word docs or slides. Scribd, for example, has tens of millions of readers every month who read and download documents from the site. The advantage here is that you can embed links and images in your documents, unlike some of the article sites that don’t accommodate images.

Docstoc.com, another popular site, gives you the tools to sell your professional documents as well as give them away for free.

Again, it is super-simple to distribute your content. Copy your blog post into a Word doc; make sure it’s nicely formatted; add your author bio with a call to action and link(s) to your blog, site and/or free reports; then convert to PDF. Upload and you’re done.

A cool feature on some doc-sharing sites like Scribd, Docstoc and others, is the ability to embed your documents on web pages and blogs. This gives readers an easy way to share your content and again extend your reach to new audiences.

Scribd and other document-sharing sites let fans embed and share your content on their own sites.

Here are three more document-sharing sites:

#3: Record an Audio Version of Your Post

I’m seeing more and more bloggers create audio versions of their blog posts. This is not difficult to do and gives your audience an additional way to consume your wisdom.

Not everyone likes to read, so create a podcast and you extend your reach even further. There are dozens of podcast directories, and of course the heavyweight is iTunes.

About 13% (27 million) of U.S. Internet users listen to podcasts so this is an audience you don’t want to overlook. They may never find your blog, but they’re using iTunes to find content.

You don’t need to be a recording star to create a decent audio of your blog post. I recommend Audacity, for free recording software. You’ll need to host your mp3 audio files on the web and create a podcast feed. Some options are Podbean or Feedburner if you post the audio on your blog.

Once the podcast feed is created, submit it to iTunes (and any other podcast directory you wish). To submit to iTunes, go to the iTunes Store, navigate to the Podcasts directory, and click on the Submit a Podcast link.

The information you’ll need to have on hand when you’re ready to submit your podcast includes: title of your “show” (the collection of audio posts you’ll be creating from your blog), description, keywords, category, and if possible, a graphic image or logo for your show.

Once you have the podcast feed created and submitted to iTunes, then it’s simply a matter of recording each blog post. I suggest a two-step approach to distributing the audio: 1) add the audio to your blog post so people can read or listen on your blog as they prefer and 2) add to your podcast feed so people can download to their mp3 player and listen on the go.

Add an audio version of your blog post to reach a bigger audience.

TIP: when you record your blog post, make sure to add a call to action or invitation to visit your blog along with your name and URL of the blog.

Much of this work can be done by a virtual assistant, especially submitting your article/document to the various sites. You write and record the post, provide the info: title, description and keywords, then have your assistant do the formatting and submissions.

Articles, PDFs and audio posts each provide an opportunity for you to reach new audiences. Now you’ve got at least three more paths from high-traffic sites leading back to your home base.

How many ways are you leveraging your blog posts? These are just three examples. What other formats have you found to effectively repurpose and distribute your blog content? Please join the discussion by commenting in the box below.

3 New Ways to Use Twitter at Live Events

Jay Baer — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:00:14 +0000

If you use Twitter, chances are you’ve tweeted from a live event. But there’s so much more Twitter can offer. In this article, I’ll share three secrets you’ve likely never heard of…

But first, why do you attend offline events? Is it the lunch (invariably chicken and rice)? Maybe the dorky name tag? Or perhaps you’re lured to the junk contained in a $5 laptop bag made in China?

No, no and no. You go to events and conferences for something more than a snack and some SWAG. You go to learn something and grow your personal network.

And in that regard, Twitter has a starring role.

Beyond live tweeting, Twitter tools can give you a whole other level of live event benefits. Here are three of my favorites:

#1: Follow ‘Em All With BlastFollow

When I’m at an industry event where the attendees are almost universally interesting or relevant to my business, I want to follow them on Twitter. I’ve been advocating for a while now that event organizers create Twitter lists of attendees, but few are doing it. But now you can take matters into your own hands with BlastFollow.

It’s an incredibly simple and effective concept. Go to http://blastfollow.com and enter the hashtag for the event you’re attending. Add your Twitter username and password. Click “Get Users!” and BlastFollow automatically follows anyone who has used the hashtag.

The system also shows you a list of everyone using the hashtag, and notes whether you’re already following them. The entire process takes about 10 seconds.

#2: Keep a Digest With Twapper Keeper

Having to decide between concurrent sessions is incredibly frustrating at good conferences. Do I go to this one, or that one? Also, sometimes you want to actually PAY ATTENTION and not tweet the session, but maybe you want to see what others tweeted as the key points. Or in some cases, your cheapo boss just wouldn’t pay for you to attend.

If any of those scenarios sound familiar, please welcome Twapper Keeper into your life. It’s the free tool that instantly creates PDF archives of all tweets that feature a particular hashtag.

Just click “Create Keyword Archive,” type in the hashtag and description, add your Twitter handle, and click the button. Bam! You’ve made an archive of all the tweets. (It also sends out a tweet from your Twitter account letting your followers know about the archive.)

I created an archive for the recent Social Media Success Summit. It’s a doozy, since SMSS (produced by the folks here at SocialMediaExaminer.com) featured 30 presenters.

Also, you can easily customize your archive by date range and by how many tweets are gathered. Date range is especially useful if the hashtag is used by multiple events, or is recurring and you only want tweets from one day. For example, I could create an archive that only includes tweets from Social Media Success Summit on the day I gave my presentation.

Twapper Keeper also has a basic search function enabling you to search for existing archives. No sense reinventing the wheel if someone has beaten you to the punch! (Thanks to my pal Todd Lynch for the heads-up on Twapper Keeper!)

Here’s an archive example I created for the Counselor’s Academy PRSA conference I spoke at about social media in Asheville, North Carolina.

#3: Bring the Event to Your Site With Tweetboard

The problem with live-tweeting an event is that it’s so amorphous and ephemeral. Like the verbal equivalent of the smoke monster on Lost, your tweets are here one second, gone the next.

Leverage your live-tweeting skills by adding a streaming Twitter widget to your website. Tweetboard is the best of these tools. It’s simple to install, has good customer service and an excellent interface.

And most importantly, Tweetboard automatically creates threadable discussions of all of your tweets—turning your 140-character event notes into an easy-to-follow discussion forum–type layout that’s perfect for deep engagement with your followers and website visitors.

Tweetboard is currently in alpha release, so you’ll have to request an invite to try it (for now). But check it out; I think you’ll instantly see how useful it can be in conveying live event coverage in an organized, sensible fashion.

Here’s a video overview of Tweetboard and how it works:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjmiwPOCt3Q

The next time you head out for a live event, armed with your i-whatever and a stack of business cards, think about using these three tools.

Have you used any of these tools? Got your own to share? How do you use Twitter when you attend events? Write your comments in the box below.

How to Add Retweet Buttons in Your PDF Documents

Michael Stelzner — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:00:59 +0000

Yes, Twitter is hot. Have you noticed this growing trend: retweet buttons showing up on websites everywhere?

Did you know you can add retweet buttons inside your PDF files? The benefit: readers can effortlessly share your great work with their Twitter followers—just by clicking a button in your PDF file.

Below I lay out how to do this in six simple steps. By the way, if you like this article, please click the retweet button you see above.

How it Works

If you have white papers, ebooks or reports, then you’ll want to add embedded retweet buttons inside your PDF files. As readers discover your valuable PDF document, they simply click a retweet button within the PDF file. The result: a message is sent to their Twitter followers pointing them to your document (can you say viral marketing?).

Here’s an example:

Note that I precrafted the above tweet. The only steps readers need to take are clicking the retweet button in the PDF file and then clicking the update button in Twitter (see above image). If a reader is not logged into Twitter, it still works. The reader simply is prompted to login and then your tweet is populated into the “What are you doing” field as shown above.

Why You Should Create Retweet Buttons in PDF Files

Because of their portable nature, PDFs are often downloaded to readers’ desktops. In addition, PDF files can be easily emailed to people, or posted in forums or on other websites.

Because a PDF file can float around, the promotional options typically found on your landing page (like a retweet button) are not available to someone who only has the file. So it’s important to provide your readers a simple way to share your great document with their fans. And that’s precisely where the PDF retweet button comes in handy.

A few benefits of having a retweet button in your PDF file include:

Empowers readers to easily share your PDF with their fans
Allows readers to show their appreciation of your work by simply clicking a button
Provides steady streams of traffic to your PDF file (because as people discover the file, they will retweet it if they like the content)
Allows you to know precisely who is sharing your document (for marketing engagement)

And I’m sure there are tons of other benefits.

6 Steps to Creating a Retweet Button in Your PDF File

Step 1: Create a Retweet Graphic and Put it in Your Document

You will need to create a little graphic you can place in your original document. If you have access to a designer, you’ll want to create something really simple that says “Retweet this.” I might suggest you place a blue bird on the graphic to give a visual signal to Twitter users.

Or, you can just swipe the one my designer created (see below):

You’ll need to place this image in your original source file. So if you’ve created your document in Microsoft Word, you’ll want to pick some strategic locations to place the image. I suggest placing the retweet image in more than one location.

In my Social Media Marketing Industry Report, I placed the retweet image in three locations: pages 2, 5 and 25.

Step 2: Create a Tracking URL That Links to the Document Landing Page

You need a permanent home for your PDF file—one where Twitter fans can go to locate the document. For example, http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/report/ is the resting place for my Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

I recommend it be a landing page that links to the actual PDF file, NOT a link that sends people directly to the PDF file. A real landing page (like the link you see above) provides you the benefit of explaining what the document is all about. In addition, you can add videos, comments and other features to that landing page which will encourage people to engage.

So once you have the actual URL for the landing page, the next step is to use a URL shortener. These services will take your long URL and create a short one. Look for one that also does marketing tracking.

Two I suggest are http://bit.ly and http://cli.gs. I am a fan of bit.ly because it provides real-time click data, is able to tell what parts of the world people are clicking from and also tracks social media conversations tied to your bit.ly URL (see image below).

This image shows some of the intelligence bit.ly provides based on click-through data.

Step 3: Write Your Tweet

Now that you have a shortened tracking URL, go ahead and craft a compelling tweet for your PDF document. Here are a few tips:

Keep it simple. Try to keep the total length to 120 characters or fewer (ideally 100). This allows Twitter folks to add comments or content to the tweet.
Consider using a hashtag for tracking purposes. You can simply go to http://search.twitter.com and search for “#yourtag” (where you replace ‘yourtag’ with a series of unique letters). For example, we used “#smreport” for the Social Media Marketing Industry Report. This allowed us to easily track the number of retweets by simply searching Twitter with the hashtag.
Use your Twitter ID: If you want to grow your following, consider using your Twitter ID in your tweet. I used @Mike_Stelzner in my example, to help grow a following. A few conventions here include adding ‘via @YourName’ to the end of the tweet or ‘RT: @YourName’ to the front of the tweet.

Step 4: Create the PDF File

You should now have your retweet graphic in a few key locations inside your PDF file. Go ahead and generate the PDF file. If you use a PC and do not have the ability to make PDF files, you can go here to learn how to do that: https://createpdf.adobe.com/.

If you are on a Mac, all you need to do is select the PDF option in the print menu (see image below).

Step 5: Create the Special URL

So here’s where the magic comes in. It’s really very straightforward. You’ll need to create a special URL that will tell Twitter everything it needs to know to make this all work.

Part one: Copy this text: http://twitter.com/?status=

Part two: Add your tweet from Step 3 above. For example: http://twitter.com/?status=RT: @mike_stelzner Social Media Marketing Industry Report (Free, must read) http://cli.gs/QYEpY2 #smreport.

http://twitter.com/?status=RT: @mike_stelzner Social Media Marketing Industry Report %28Free, must read%29 http://cli.gs/QYEpY2 %23smreport

A note about hashtags. If you have a hashtag (the # symbol) in your tweet, you need to replace it with the following text: %23. For example, #mydoc becomes %23mydoc in your special URL. Note that I have seen some situations where # works and others where it does not, so play it safe.

Now test the link. If you paste it into your browser, it should show up in your Twitter status window. Make sure your hashtag is showing up.

Step 6: Hotlink the Retweet Graphic Inside Your PDF File

This next step is going to require Adobe Acrobat Pro. If you do not have Acrobat Pro, try to find someone who does. Acrobat Pro will allow you to create hotlinks inside your PDF file.

In Acrobat, locate the retweet buttons you added into your file and simply create a clickable link for each retweet graphic. Use the special URL you created in Step 5 above.

Here’s what you need to do. When in Acrobat Professional, you want to use the Link Tool. In Acrobat Professional 8, this is found under the Tools menu and then under the Advanced Editing submenu.

Once you have selected the Link Tool, you can simply take your mouse and drag a rectangle over the retweet graphic. Up will pop a box called ‘Create Link’ (see below). You want to keep the link type invisible, highlight style to ‘None’ and select ‘Open a web page’ as the link action.

Then hit the ‘Next’ button. You’ll be prompted to enter your special URL. Just paste it in.

Now repeat the process for all the retweet buttons you have in your PDF file. Save it and you’re done. Your last step is to get the file up on your landing page.

Now you can sit back and watch the magic happen as people retweet your PDF document. I like creating a saved search query in my Twitter profile so I can see with a single click how often the document is retweeted.

So what do you think? Is this something that could benefit your business? Let me know your experience.