Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The beginning of the year is a great time to reflect on the tools we use and to experiment with new ones that will help make our jobs easier for the next 12 months. These are the online marketing tools that we recommend for 2010.
Listening Tools
At the heart of any online marketing campaign is listening to what your competitors are doing and what others are saying about you. If you don’t know what’s going on in the online space, how can you manage your brand?
In addition, it’s important to know what conversations are already happening before you take the plunge and join in.
1. Google Alerts
Google Alerts are simple to set up and are effective for monitoring what’s going on online. Create alerts for your brand name, your competitors’ names, and top keywords that you want to rank for in search results. In the words of Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo, Google Alerts are “an oldie but a goodie.”\
2. Yahoo Pipes
Yahoo Pipes is a RSS feed aggregator that allows you to monitor mentions of your brand throughout the web. You build a pipe by combining RSS feeds (Learn How to Build a Pipe in Just a Few Minutes) and then you can sort and filter what’s being said about you online.
3. Twitter Lists
With everyone on Twitter these days, how you are supposed to keep up with what everyone’s talking about? To help us, Twitter has Lists, which allow people to group tweeters by subject or theme. Want to know what’s going on in the technology sector, for example? Follow the Most Influential People in Tech List.
To find lists, go to Listorious.
Conversation Tools
Once you have an understanding of what’s going on, it’s time to start talking.
4. Hootsuite
With Hootsuite, you can manage multiple twitter accounts, schedule your tweets and get valuable stats on your twitter activities; like how many people are clicking on your tweets, or your most popular tweets for the last month.
Watch out for the Twitter for Business Handbook coming soon from Boxcar Marketing.
5. LinkedIn’s Questions & Answers
LinkedIn is the equivalent of an online business conference. Asking and answering questions on LinkedIn is a great way to build up your reputation among peers in your industry. This leads to more opportunities for someone to recognize your authority and contact you for something further.
Sharing Tools
Once you start having conversations, it’s important to establish your value to the community by sharing content and useful information.
6. Google Reader
Use Google Reader to start building a community around your feeds and the feeds you follow. Once you fill out your Google Profile, start following people, share your items, comment and bundle your RSS feeds together.
7. Slideshare
This is a great tool for sharing your slideshow presentations and videos. You can upload your PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Adobe PDFs, share publicly or privately and add audio to make a webinar.
Take a tour of slideshare.
8. Blog
When you have lots of interesting things to share on an ongoing basis, it’s time for a blog. Participating in social networks is like renting space, whereas blogging is owning your own space. If you have the resources to own, then do it. Copyblogger.com offers copy writing and content tips for online marketing success.
Conclusion
It’s important to note that online tools do not equal an online strategy. Before adding social media to your marketing mix, make sure you know what you want to give and what you expect to get from participating. Knowing these basics allows you to then properly plan how you’ll measure success and how you’ll determine whether the investment in people, time and technology is worth continuing. Plan so you can measure, measure so you can improve.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
If you’re like us, you subscribe to blogs with the full intention of reading every post but, as your email or RSS reader fills up, you never get around to reading all (if any) of them. If you’re looking to narrow down your reading list for 2010, these are the blogs we always make time to read - and recommend that you should, too.
Seth’s Blog
Marketing and business guru Seth Godin shares his thoughts on marketing, spreading ideas and standing out from the crowd.
MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog
A great blog for online marketing resources, marketing articles, online seminars, case studies, conferences and events.
Mequoda Daily
A blog that focuses on online publishing, information marketing and make money online.
Get Elastic The Ecommerce Blog
The #1 ecommerce blog in the world, covering SEO, usability, analytics, email, shopping cart abandonment, and social media.
VKI Studios
Internet marketing and website usability blog to help you get more traffic and higher conversation rates.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Reviewed from Uncorrected Proof
Friends with Benefits is one of the few books that offers social media marketing case studies with accompanying stats. Although every company has to set their own baseline for metrics, having a reasonable idea of what to expect is critical. Much of this private info is never shared, which means it is hard for a marketer who’s new to social media to answer the boss’s question, “what do I get for this
investment in social media.”
No Starch Press has given us permission to excerpt a couple of sections of the book. This second one is an excellent list of what you should be measuring online.
Friends with Benefits: Chapter 6
What Does Success Look Like?
Once you’ve determined your objectives, what should you measure? Here are eight possibilities, starting with the most common.
- Visitors
...Setting up [Google Analytics or WebTrends] only takes a few minutes and provides accurate, real-time data about the number of people visiting your site, what links they’re clicking, and whether or not they’re buying anything while on your site. Reviewing your web analytics is like looking over a visitor’s shoulder…
- Incoming links
As we’ve said before, links are the currency of the Web and are essential to generating online buzz. For sophisticated web users, incoming links indicate your authority and expertise…
- Social network activity
How many friends does your Facebook group have? How many followers does your Twitter feed have? When you add an event to Upcoming.org, do people join?...
- Conversations and contributions
These might be comments on your blog, Facebook page, YouTube video, or Flickr photos. Alternately, you might measure how often your customers add to or modify your public wiki or Wikipedia entry…
- References in the blogosphere
How often do other blogs mention your organization? Are you generating buzz?...
- Views on social media sites
How many times has your video been played on YouTube? How many people have downloaded your latest podcast? Many sites allow the audience to rate your content as a way to express whether or not they find it useful and enjoyable. Are you getting the thumbs up on Digg?...
- RSS subscribers
These folks are extremely valuable. Like newsletter subscribers, you have permission to contact them regularly, which means they’re interested in what you’re doing or selling. their actions should infuence your site content and design; they are your online focus group…
- Social bookmarking
How often do your customers add links about your organization to services like Digg, del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon? In other words, do others find your content compelling enough to share with friends or bookmark for future reference?
Win a copy of Friends with Benefits!
Boxcar Marketing is giving away 2 copies of Friends with Benefits! Friend us on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter and enter to win a free copy of Friends with Benefits. The draw will be held on December 17.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
What better way to show the world that reading is sexy than through a pin-up calendar that raises funds to support dyslexia?
The Reading Is Sexy Calendar, featuring some of Vancouver’s finest (and sexiest!) readers, is being launched this week. The calendar aims to promote literacy and to raise funds to help kids (and adults) with dyslexia become literate.
The idea for a “Reading Is Sexy” calendar was sparked back in the spring, when Ian Martin (http://www.twitter.com/IanAMartin) of Atomic Fez Publishing (http://www.twitter.com/atomicfez) began goading Emme Rogers, founder of the blog Being Emme, into saying “reading is sexy’ as often as possible on twitter.
The calendar is modeled on a “pin-up girl” style, similar to the one that Bryne Pen created on Salt Spring to raise funds and awareness for The Land Conservancy. In this case, the calendar supports the Canadian Branch of the International Dyslexia Association.
Who’s in the calendar
Photographers
If you’d like to support the Canadian Branch of the International Dyslexia Association, please buy the calendar.
And if you’d like your calendar signed by the men and women of “Reading Is Sexy”, please come out to the Launch Party and Literary Celebration on Thursday.
Local: Gudrun Wine & Cheese Bistro (150-3500 Moncton Street, Steveston, BC)
Date: Thursday December 3, 2009
Time: 7 pm until late
Stop by for author readings, calendar signings by the models, and the auctioning of some of Robert Shaer’s photos from the shoot. Plus Gudrun goodies, wine and beer will be on sale.
Oh, and Monique is Miss January.
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