How to Create Content That Engages Prospects and Customers
When Rick Short, director of marketing communications for Indium Corporation, began thinking about his social media strategy, he started with keyword research.
He identified 73 of the most important keywords his prospective customers would search for. Then he created 73 different blogs that focused on each keyword and assigned a dozen employees to write those blogs.
The results amazed him. Once the blogs took off, customer contacts increased 600% in a single quarter. And everyone who contacted a blog author, commented on a blog post or downloaded a white paper opted in to the company’s customer database. 
How to Grow a Blog Community With Social Media
In this video I interview Darren Rowse, co-author of the best-selling book ProBlogger and founder of the popular blog ProBlogger. You’ll find out how blogging has changed and what you need to know to adapt to these changes.
Darren talks about how he uses social media to build stronger relationships with his blog audience and gives you tips to find which social media platforms work best for your blog.
Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.
How Social Media Generated $300,000 in Software Sales in a Weekend
Logos Bible Software has worked hard to build its email list of 300,000. So choosing to shun that email list for its Black Friday promotion says a lot for the chosen alternative – social media.
Practically every other online retailer – and Logos is 100% online – blasted customers with their post-Thanksgiving email promotions.
But this software company solely relied on social media, from testing its ideas to launching the promotion to letting the resulting word of mouth do the work for them.
In response, Logos generated $300,000 in sales in those few days – three times what it brought in during the same period the year before. Not only did it add to the bottom line, but also Logos significantly expanded its fans, followers and customer connections to support future efforts.
Most Marketers Clueless About Social Media Conversations
Alterian’s 8th annual survey of marketers examined the changes affecting marketing professionals today. The results below show a developing shift—one that’s moving away from the typical broadcasting we’ve seen in social media’s early days and moving more toward higher engagement.
According to the survey, marketers admit to struggling with customer engagement on multiple channels. This makes sense as many marketers are just beginning to experiment with more engagement efforts, one channel at a time.
In the near future, we’ll begin to see this single channel engagement morph into a more synergistic engagement effort over multiple channels. As we’ve seen with other social media trends, these shifts take time.
8 Hot Social Media Tips From Eight Industry Experts
Are you looking for some creative ideas to enhance your social media activities? If so, look no further.
To help you lay down tracks for social media success, here’s a solid list of strategies from eight top social media experts. Take a look, ask yourself what tips you can use and start reaping the rewards of real success.
#1: Offer live events on Facebook
“To provide additional value and fresh ways for your fans to interact with you, periodically conduct live chat sessions or live webinars or teleseminars. My co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day, Chris Treadaway, and I recently conducted what we called a ‘flash chat’ in order to crowdsource content for version two of our book,” explained Mari Smith.
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.
UnMarketing: Stop Pushing and Praying, Start Pulling and Staying
When marketing consultant Scott Stratten worked with the owners of a new restaurant, he recommended inviting residents of a nearby condo complex to a free dinner. Over two nights, the owners could get 150 people to start the buzz about the new restaurant in town.
But the owners balked at giving away free food, which they estimated would cost them several thousand dollars. Yet they had spent $5,000 on a magazine ad!
“How many customers did it bring in?” Stratten asked. “We don’t know,” they replied.
Does this sound familiar? Stratten calls this the “push and pray” marketing strategy. You push your ad out to thousands and even millions of people, and pray that some respond.
How H&R Block Uses Social Media to Enhance Customer Relations
In this video I interview Jennifer Love, Senior Vice President of Communications at H&R Block. Jennifer shares how H&R Block adapts conversations across all channels to create customer experiences which bring in tons of referrals.
You’ll hear how she adapts her social media tactics to get the most value out of the 120-day tax season and why she strives to pull in questions and how she answers them in a challenging real-time environment.
Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.
Study Reveals Top 6 Social Media Goals for 2011
In 2010, many businesses laid their social media foundations. In 2011, many wonder what social media marketers will tackle as their top priorities.
Altimeter Group‘s recent research reveals that integration, staffing, advertising and measurement are all key areas of focus for social media strategists in 2011.
Jeremiah Owyang, industry analyst and Altimeter Group partner who focuses on customer strategy, recently delivered the keynote Social Business Forecast: 2011 The Year of Integration. He offered some extremely valuable survey results, insights and advice for businesses looking to expand their social media plans in 2011.
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.
