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Looking to plan an earned media strategy? Here are 7 essential questions that you need to answer.
Earned media strategies are the bread and butter of effective content promotion, and creating and promoting a successful piece of content comes with a lot of work.
If you fail to construct a solid strategy, your content may miss the mark—and more importantly, it may miss your audience all together. But how can you be sure you’ve built a foolproof strategy? Before working on your next campaign, ask yourself these seven questions....
The omni-channel, real-time, everything’s available environment we are currently living in has changed the marketing fundamentals quite radically. The world is no longer the same place for which The marketer E.Jerome McCarthy proposed a four Ps classification in 1960, which has since been used by marketers throughout the world.
This age requires us to re-design them. Here’s my attempt. Please comment and let’s make them even better: - Position – in customer’s mind - Performance – the user experience - Proximity – How close the brand is to it’s customers, Customer intimacy - Price – Price is no longer a fixed figure - Presence – instead of Place - Product - Promotion...
2014 should be a very interesting year in digital marketing. Businesses are beginning to show more mature digital mindsets which are driving their agencies towards innovation, new media platforms are changing the landscape and the past few years of experimentation should lean toward major advancements and changes in effective digital communication. In my research I have found the following trends that should become evident in 2014...
...like thousands of other words and phrases, it has many definitions including “a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.” However, in our world of marketing and advertising, it means something completely different and according to Aileen Lee, partner at venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, “In the age of the social web, social proof is the new marketing.”
Basically if someone else has done it or used it and talked about it online, that’s social proof. As a B2B or B2C company, how do you go about getting people to talk about you or your product? And more importantly what do you do with that social proof once you get it?...
You start with an idea, create an explainer video, spend a minimum amount of money, and 8 weeks later you've got more than 17 million YouTube views, thousands of quality links, 900,000 registered supporters and coverage in many of the world's leading media. And to cap it all, one of the world's top cell phone companies, Motorola contacts you to explore a partnership.That's the story of Dave Hakkens and his concept Phonebloks – not yet a finished product. It's a story that has much to teach SEO professionals about online public relations....
Is your website slow?
Use these five free website speed testing tools to get information about your website’s loading speed and performance, as well as an understanding of issues that slow your site down....
It's no small task these days to keep up with all the recent social media changes. Only a few weeks ago, we talked about the biggest new Facebook changes where the link posting iterations especially changed a lot of our behaviors.
Looking at the biggest social media statistics, it’s clear that Twitter, with 215 million active users, also needs to constantly change to keep up with the tide.
As Twitter continues to grow, the company is making big changes more often and they’re easy to miss. In case you didn’t catch them, I collected seven of the most recent Twitter changes to get you up to speed....
What is PR today? Depending on who you talk to, it's either stuck in the prehistoric era of the dinosaurs or trapped in the social media Twilight Zone.
Smart PR pros recognize a foundation of traditional PR integrated with a new social media toolbox, content marketing and new digital channels is the recipe for success.
Will “Old PR” go extinct? Brian Kilgore doesn’t think so though, if you read his recent The Huffington Post article Don’t Insult PR People by Calling Them Marketers...
Do people quoted in newspapers review the stories before they run? Can advertisers legally lie? Are PR people the biggest liars of all? How much does it cost to get a story into The Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star?
Just a few questions that show people do not understand public relations.
Klout really wants to make you care about your online influence.
That’s in part why the company has, with little fanfare, pushed out Cinch, an iOS application that pairs questions asked by users with other “experts” on certain topics, based on their amount of knowledge of the area in question.
The idea is basically leveraging the value of Klout’s flagship product, which purports to rank people in terms of their influence in certain areas. I, for instance, tweet a whole bunch about Facebook and Twitter as companies, so it would make sense for a product like Cinch to pair a person’s Facebook-related questions with my answers....
...showcase–those who are doing the hard work to integrate social media into some of America’s bigger companies. And then I got to thinking–there really is no list of these people anywhere.
Oh sure, there are Twitter lists here and there. Jeremiah Owyang has his list of social media new hires (and the last time he posted it was April 7). But, I really haven’t seen a good list of corporate social media leaders anywhere.
Probably with good reason. These folks are in high demand. Any such list would be pretty valuable to recruiters and agencies/companies (insert Arik evil laugh here). So, I thought, why not create one? Or, at least START to create one.
UK plumber Charlie Mullins' Pimlico Plumbers which has a reputation for being head-and-shoulders above the rest when it comes to marketing. He explains his tricks to get yourself noticed....
Even those that don't use his firm for their plumbing needs will, in all probability, have watched or read about him on television, online or in newspapers. Here are his top tips on how to make a small business stand out in a crowded marketplace....
Your website is the hub of your inbound marketing efforts. Every piece of content you create or campaign you run should be designed to drive traffic to your website and landing pages, giving you the chance to convert visitors into leads and customers. It makes sense, then, to start by looking at insights from your web analytics platform, such as Google’s free Google Analytics, or a paid platform like HubSpot .
Let's review the 8 essential metrics you should be tracking on your website and its landing pages, and how you can use these metrics to optimize and improve your website’s performance....
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Public Relations - Savvy digital marketers who use the methodologies of public relations in a sustained and strategic manner across the board can reap a potential world of benefits.
However, I'm of the opinion that although SEO is here to stay, its evolution will lean toward the more traditional practice of public relations (PR) in the coming years. In this article I'll try to… - Back up this claim by looking at industry statistics - Put forward a case as to why PR can be highly complementary to SEO - And, above all, offer some suggestions about how marketers can capitalize on this trend...
Content marketing has become ubiquitous, with 93% of B2B marketers now using it. And it continues to expand: 82% of marketers plan to increase their budgets for content marketing in 2014.
Nevertheless, challenges remain; many marketers struggle to produce engaging content, and though buyers have embraced content generally as a influence on vendor selection, they remain frustrated with content they see as blatantly promotional, too self-serving, and not well informed. In addition, nearly half of marketers say they are unable to measure the value of their content marketing efforts.
Which content marketing tactics are most popular? Which are under-used? How can marketers make their content marketing efforts more effective?
Find these answers and many more in this compilation of 30 compelling content marketing statistics and facts....
Why Social Media & Search Marketing go hand in hand. Taking the example of the Flower & Gifts Industry.
...We believe that Social Media and Search Marketing go hand in hand because Social conversations can lead keyword strategy in a certain direction, and Search keywords can influence Social content strategy. By combining your Search & Social Marketing efforts, you can make sure to provide your audience with the right content, based on what they search for the most and what engages them on Social Media. Today we will take a look at the Flowers & Gifts Industry as an example of Social Media & Search Marketing alignment...
A recent report by the Pew Research Center stated that 78% of Internet users research products and services online. And this is not people going to company websites to be spoon-fed corporate descriptions – this is people engaging with brands, reading reviews, and seeing how their peers view companies and products.
A large majority of this is done through social media and if you are not a part of the conversation, you are losing out on a chance to manage and grow your brand’s reputation. One of the best ways to grow your brand’s presence is by targeting and engaging influencers, this allows you to quickly grow your brand’s awareness and influence.
These five steps will show you the ins-and-outs of targeting and engaging influencers to maximize your brand presence....
How prepared is your organization to deal with real-time marketing & PR or newsjacking opportunities? Here are a few suggestions to help you get real with real-time.
The public relations industry is known for a lot of things: media relations, press conferences, event management, crisis communications, and, more recently, social media strategy and community management.
But there’s one thing that many communicators haven’t been particularly well-known for: creativity. At best, PR has been put in a box to amplify creative ideas developed by others. At worst, we’ve been accused of “spinning” stories or doing “stunts” to make a splash.
That’s changing. Over the last 18 months or so, branding, advertising and digital agencies’ dominance over creative campaigns has started to wane. Clients are increasingly turning to PR agencies to come up with the “big idea,” as the discipline is now in a good spot to call the shots on creative development. Here’s why.
Earlier this month, the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) released their Digital PR Report 2013 which had some very interesting findings....
As someone who has worked in both the PR and SEO industries, I have to say it’s very hard to classify which activity should sit with PR and which sits in SEO as they seem to very much be merging into the same thing. What makes a successful SEO campaign is now very similar to what makes a successful PR campaign it’s just the reporting that takes a different track. A lot of the campaigns and activity that I execute for SEO clients would be the same even if they were for a sole PR client, which just shows how much the two industries are merging.
There have always been blurred lines when it comes to marketing activity – where should social media sit, who should have control of the company blog – activities no longer sit easily in one team anymore but need input from all different teams in order to make them a success....
Just when it seems social media marketing has gone as far as it can, a new year begins and the field continues to evolve. As businesses watch a new year approach, many are wondering how they should adjust their content marketing efforts to match any industry changes next year.
As you formulate a plan for your upcoming campaigns, it’s important to take into account the social media environment we can expect over the course of 2014. Here are a few major changes to the social media landscape that experts are predicting next year....
Back in March, Edelman advisor Steve Rubeltold us that upcoming PR professionals need to “look at the bigger picture” and “orient [themselves] toward both creating and distributing content”. The firm’s newest tech advisor Burghardt Tenderichrecently gaveThe Holmes Report a more direct version of that statement:
“PR needs to grow up and become real content creators.”
While it may not be the norm in public relations just yet, integrated communications is starting to take up more bandwidth in the PR process.
At our recent PR Agency Elite Luncheon, PR News spoke with Lia LoBello, a management supervisor at Peppercomm, which captured the Elite Award for Integrated Communications. LoBello shared a few tips on how PR execs can maximize integrated communications.
LoBello said that Peppercomm’s motto, “Listen, Engage, Repeat,” is the agency’s driving force behind working with other marketing disciplines. She added that in order to demonstrate their value, PR execs need a “deep understanding” of myriad marketing disciplines and should help decide how melding the various marketing channels together will create the best go-to-market strategy.
In helping to create integrated-marketing plans, PR agencies also need to take a “deep dive” into social media, LoBello said. “You need to take a hard look at all of the social channels,” she said. “Using Instagram may require a different approach” than Facebook or Twitter, for example. You have to match each social channel, if it’s appropriate for the campaign, with the ultimate goals of the client....
Lots of people talk about “viral marketing” but apart from a (very) few, lighting-strikes-once exceptions, there’s very few who have built a business or even a soundly executed marketing strategy from it.If anyone can honestly be said to have “cracked the code” on viral, it’s arguably got to be BuzzFeed, the social publishing/advertising company who recently passed 30 Million visitors per month in viewership, whose 2012 revenues tripled 2011s, and who has recently been featured in both the New York Times and The Atlantic. And what’s BuzzFeed’s secret?
Well, it would be a dramatic oversimplification to ascribe their massive success to just one “secret.” According to BuzzFeed’s founder and CEO, Jonah Peretti, it’s actually 7 things. But the real “secret” they know that you (likely) don’t, and that I guarantee will help you with your online video content marketing, is this:The have absolutely zero shame in promoting their “viral” content....
One of the big focuses in social marketing today is influencer marketing.
The idea being that if you can get one person to tell something to their large audience, their audience will listen.
For organizations this is seen as less effort and potentially high response.
In reality, things aren’t that simple.Let’s take a look at a few things to keep in mind when you approach influencer marketing....
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Valuable tips for PR and marketing strategists.