The Most Powerful Technique

November 18, 2011 By 8 Comments

The Power of Newsjacking

Like all great ideas the new book by David Meerman Scott leaves the reader thinking ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’, and the ideas in this book are great. The book is Called ‘Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage’ and is available by digital download only.

What is it?

The central idea of the book is that your company can gain massive media exposure by becoming part of a news story. To do this you must identify an item of breaking news where you can add value, produce some quotable content then get the content to journalists covering the story or get them to notice it. Your goal – to be quoted in paragraph 2 of as many articles about the story as possible. The net impact of a successful newsjack can be £1000s of free exposure for your company.

Its Easy

Sounds simple doesn’t it? and it is, but there are certain things which are mission critical if you want to be a successful newsjacker. DM Scott tells you how to put the systems in place to discover stories, how to get your article found by journalists researching the breaking news, he gives examples of successful newsjackers including a lady who newsjacked Paris Hilton and a porn king who is a serial newsjacker. He even shows you how to get the journalists bringing stories to you for your input.

Review

For me this is a fantastic book and the techniques are something I am going to encourage my clients to implement. I have immediately become aware of 2 great opportunities recently where one of my clients could have used newsjacking techniques to gain media exposure.

I have not read a Kindle book before and it was just like reading a high quailty ebook. I think it was the right decision to publish it in ebook format because the book is very concise and the links really add to it.

If there is one thing the book is a bit light on it is that DM Scott talks about the necessity for large companies and corporations to put themselves in a position to fend off newsjacking events but doesn’t really say how to fend off a newsjack in progress.

Verdict

I think newsjacking is going to become much more widespread over the next few months and years. If you are at all involved with marketing read this book now and get ahead of the trend!

Want to be a Newsjacker?

  • Put systems in place to monitor news and monitor avidly
  • Have the ability to publish at short notice
  • Use the right angle and the correct language in communications

Buy the book here >>  (affiliate link)
Joe

 

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media, Social Media Management, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Facebook F8 Resources

September 23, 2011 By 4 Comments

The Next Web: Everything You Need To Know About f8

An SEO’s Take On It

Facebook is Not a Social Network Anymore

Mark Zuckerberg’s f8 Keynote

Introducing Timeline

Enable New Timeline Feature

Facebook Timeline Manchester

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Tagged With: ,

9 Ways To Cheat At Social Media

September 14, 2011 By 6 Comments

Game Social Media

1. Buy likes/ followers/views

There are websites where, for a fee, you can get likes on your Facebook Page, buy Twitter followers or buy views on your Youtube video.

There could be benefit in doing this. Your accounts look more popular and with a phenomenon known as social proof, people are ironically more likely to trust you, gaining you more real followers and influence.

2. Buy plus ones

There are packages where you can now buy Google +1s for your website. Though the effects of buying +1s are largely unknown, it is possible your website might gain a higher ranking the more +1s you have. Google +1s from others in your online network are certainly a ranking factor in Google.

3. Mass follow/ unfollow

Either manually or using automated churn scripts like Tweet Adder you can follow and unfollow hundreds of people on your Twitter account.

The follow back rate for Twitter is around 50%, so if you follow and unfollow enough people you can amass quite a following without looking like you are following half the planet!

4. Automate updates

To ensure there is substantial content coming from your Twitter account, you can go to any website with a blog and copy and paste the RSS feed into Twitterfeed. That way every time there is a new post it will be automatically tweeted out to your followers. Social Oomph is another tool you can use to automate your Twitter updates.

5. Game Klout

Klout is a measure of social media influence. The algorithm measures follow-follower ratio, as well as number of tweet, retweets, etc. You can game Klout though. For instance just Tweeting a lot can get you a Klout score of 50 (I do mean a lot ;) ) and here’s another post about gaming Klout.

6. #ff lots of people

Follow Friday (#FF) is a practice used to by Twitter users to recommend people they follow. One way to get visibility with your followers is to #FF many blocks of your followers on a Friday. This is also likely to get you mentions if they thank you (think Klout score) ;)

7. Use a personal account for your business on Facebook and friend people

You can open a personal Facebook account for your business and attempt to ‘friend’ prospective customers. You can then convert to a Facebook Page once you have built a fanbase! You might get slapped with a temporary ban if too many people report you for attempting to ‘friend’ them though.

8. Steal blog content

At the darker end of the spectrum, you can put up a website, ‘scrape’ content from other websites and use it on your own :( . If your content gets ‘crawled’ before the stolen content, Google may recognise your content as the original!

You can prevent this from happening to you for example by using this free plugin on your WordPress site http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pubsubhubbub/

9. Spam blog comments

To try to get traffic to your blog and backlinks you can find and comment on as many blogs as possible that your customers and prospects are reading and add comments with no value; you don’t even need to read the blog to do this.

The most traffic generally comes from comments near the top. Be warned readers may think it unlikely you are ‘adding to the conversation.’

Some of these tactics mentioned here are more effective than others, some are also more unethical than others too! Just remember, the reputation of your business is at stake.

Do you know of any tactics people use to try and cheat at social media?

 

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

The 3 Words That Will Make Your Followers Love You

September 6, 2011 By 5 Comments

Human beings like to think they are rational but at the end of the day they are driven by emotions.

Some self help gurus would boil it down even further and tell you that humans are driven away from pain and towards pleasure. IMO they do this so American’s can understand the concept (sorry I watched the final of Celebrity Apprentice USA last night).

What this tells us though is that if we want to drive humans (which we do) we need to engage their emotions.

Strategy

As with anything social media related we want to put a strategy in place before implementation and I am going to help you with that now by asking you one simple question:

What 3 emotions do you want to elicit in your Twitter followers?

Don’t answer just yet!

Lets look at some of my fave Twitterers to see what emotions they elicit from their followers:

@Copyblogger (Brian Clarke)

1. Amusement – Often makes me smile

2. Interest – Headlines always make you want to click

3. Trust – Message has rock solid consistency

@Unmarketing (Scott Stratten)

1. Amusement – Of a sarcastic bent

2. Empathy – The spokesperson for the annoyed internet user (in a funny way)

3. Satisfaction – Seems down to earth, similar to 2.

@MariSmith

1. Friendliness – Always reaching out to people

2. Happiness – Winning smile, happy voice

3. Excitement – Seems very passionate about Facebook and social media

… and here are the emotions I try to elicit:

1. Amusement

2. Trust

3. Interest

The same as @Copyblogger, not a bad man to model in the least! :)

Take note – these are all positive emotions, feel the good vibes maaaaaan

Benefits

  • More likely to get re-tweeted
  • More likely to get followed in the first place
  • Attention – people will look out for your tweets!
And of course, this translates to more clicks, traffic, leads and customers.

Now, what are the 3 emotions you are going to elicit in your followers?

Please leave them in the comments below!

Joe

PS. This concept was put forward in this book >>  Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing Is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online (aff link). This is my take on it :)

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Are You Producing Quality Content?

August 23, 2011 By 4 Comments

Quality Content

There are nearly 100 million domains registered….. and that’s just .com domains! so…

..What Makes You Stand Out?

What makes people come to your website and want to keep coming back and engage with your company?

Simple – its quality content.

What The Gurus Say

SEO Gurus have recently been pointing out producing quality content means outsized results whilst mediocre or even good content, well as I said earlier: 100,000,000 domains….

A Great Example

As an example, this post with infographic the Noob Guide to Internet Marketing took (the writer) 3 months start to finish.

The post has been shared over 4000 times on Twitter, has 818 Facebook ‘Likes’ and has generated 222 comments since it was posted in February (plus many more shares of the infographic on it own).

Quality Content Test:

1. Can the reader/ content consumer find this info anywhere else?

2. If it is a blog article, would it make it to print?

3. Are you demonstrating your expertise?

4. If it is news, have you added your perspective?

5. Does the content look professional? – Well edited etc.

Weigh Up The Competition

Take a look around, you might have tons of knowledge which isn’t covered anywhere – bingo! If not, you might have a bit more work to do.

Don’t Panick

I am not saying you have to hit it out of the park with every blog post, but bear in mind the questions I have outlined above when producing content.

Over To You

What do you think makes quality content? Do you have a quality content test?

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

How To Make Your Website More Social

August 2, 2011 By 3 Comments

Social Media Website

Its a great idea in 2011 to make your website as social as possible.

Here are a few things you can do to make your website a more social experience! (If you’re a WordPress user :) )

Comments – enabled

Use the Disqus plugin to allow peoples’ comments to be updated immediately.

This encourages people to comment and you are notified immediately by email when they do :) .

Share buttons – everywhere

Use the Tweet Meme button and the Facebook Like button at the top of your posts.

Use the Share and Follow plugin at the bottom of each post to encourage sharing on: Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Twitter (and more)

(I just use the share part of this plugin.)

Encourage Connection

Use the Social Profiles plugin  to encourage people to subscribe to you posts and connect with you :)

Tweets

Import your latest tweets using the Twitter Tools plugin. This plugin also automatically syndicates your blog posts directly to Twitter, saving you time.

Facebook Connect

Use the Facebook Like Box for social proof and to encourage people to like your Facebook Page. Facebook generates some code for you then you pop it into a text box and put it in the sidebar.

Overkill

The Twitter follow button

Googleplus/ LinkedIn

I have tried the Googlecards plugin but haven’t got it to work yet (give it a try to build your circles :) )

I do have a +1 button at the bottom of each post though.

Its probably a good idea to use a LinkedIn share button if you are a professional too.

Your Site?

Do you use any of these plugins? Which plugins do you find best?

 

I hope this helps.

Joe

 

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Filed Under: Blog, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Social Media For Business – Still Not Getting It?

July 29, 2011 By 3 Comments

Social Media For Business #Fail

Most Businesses Still Aren’t Using Social Media

I have been reading and listening to a few thing around the web recently which in many ways I still find surprising but in other ways match up very closely with what I am observing in reality…

…..in general companies still do not get social media for business.

Social Media Stats

Stats show that in the US 31% of small businesses have a social media presence (27% on Facebook) and you can bet your bottom dollar (or pound) that is one hell of a lot lower in the UK.

The thing is that of those companies I have observed who do have a social media presence only a handful are active and even less are using the tools effectively.

I honestly don’t know what the holdup is here?

Does this explain it?

Perhaps a recent marketing over coffee podcast I listened to where author DM Scott is interviewed offers up some explanation?

David provides social media marketing consultancy to big corporations in the US, only that’s not what he tells the CEO.

David frames social media for business as real time communications and he says the businesses he work with understand the benefits of that a lot better.

Does this explain it?

I think one of the issues is the perception of social media as being what teenagers do for fun, particularly by the older members of the buisness community.

Sure, people do share pictures of pets, tell you what they had for lunch and all sorts of other stuff through social media but there are also many conversations occurring which are of potential benefit to your business!

Start Today (or Monday)

Find the conversations, build your audience and influence, grow your customer base and sales. (See my resources section for the best resources to show you how :) )

At the minute hardly anyone has started.

I cannot over-emphasise just how HUGE this opportunity is!

Start your social media marketing campaign today! (or Monday)

What’s Your View?

How are you getting on with your social media marketing? What factors do you think are holding businesses back?

Joe

 

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What’s Your Dream Job?

July 26, 2011 By 7 Comments

Social Media Management = Dream Job

A Visit

I was visiting my gran yesterday afternoon and she asked me what I would like to be doing as a job.

I told her my dream job is what I am doing right now! – digital marketing :)

I Heart Social Media Marketing

I love digital marketing (specifically social media marketing) and here’s why:

Its creative – in the world of social media marketing, ideas and creativity win and that’s one of my key strengths

Integrity – companies marketing through social media need integrity to be effective otherwise the process becomes ‘social media firefighting’

Opportunity – social media is offering up opportunities left and right for companies to improve and increase profits (by listening and engaging). I can help them capitalise on these opportunities before the competition

Lot to learn – even the A list social media people will tell you they are learning and improving their social media activities every day. I love having a lot to learn – it keeps things interesting :)

You Heart ?

Right now is a great time to be doing what you love doing.

What are you passionate about? What are you good at? What’s your dream job?

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Should you Schedule Updates for Twitter?

July 18, 2011 By 6 Comments

Should You Schedule Updates for Twitter?

Check out the video to find out:

Benefits

Schedule updates for Twitter to save time.

Forget about having to post if you are very busy at work. You have some ‘in the bank’ so you still have a presence on Twitter.

If you are promoting something such as an event, new product or special offer you can plan a campaign and schedule tweets accordingly.

Don’t Forget

If you are scheduling updated you will still need to check your Twitter account or Twitter client (every day) to see if there are any messages. If people send you a message on the platform they will expect a response relatively quickly.

Try to put time aside every day to go live on Twitter, sending updates, responding to your network and retweeting.

More Reasons

If you are marketing internationally you will need to schedule tweets to reach people in different time zones.

You may wish to schedule several repeats of the same tweet, for example to gain exposure for your blog.

Schedule Updates

Use Hootsuite or Social Oomph to schedule updates (affiliate links). Both offer free and paid versions.

I have used both and recommend Hootsuite.

Feel free to leave comments below.

 

Take care,

Joe

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Management, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Social Media Profile Branding

July 13, 2011 By 4 Comments

Social Media Profile Branding

When it comes to social media profile branding it is important to be consistent.

Name

You will want to use your company name across the social media platforms or if not at least grab the name so no one else can use it :) .

Use this tool to check the availability of your company name across many social media platforms.

As an alternative you may wish to use your own name, a version of your company name or a combination of your company name and your name (like I am have on Twitter).

Design

Another element which needs to be consistent is the design. If you have the resources it is advisable (if possible!) to customise the design of your social media profiles.

Avatar

Social media is all about connections between people. One way to increase the level of connection with your profiles is by using photos of people (headshots) rather than the company logo as your avatar.

Mari Smith suggests having several shots taken by a professional photographer and using those across the various social media platforms.

Content

It is important that your content is consistent, for example that you post regularly and maintain the same ‘voice’ for your company.

Larger companies with many people contributing may wish to draw up guidelines to help with consistency.

 

I hope you find this post useful!

Any branding experts want to chip in :) ?

Have you thought about the branding of your social media profiles?

 

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Management, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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