Archive for the ‘marketing’ Category
7 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts
Is your blog like a field of dreams? If you write it they will come? Readers can be developed with promotion.
So you write posts for your corporate blog or your personal blog. And you’ve learned how to make your posts interesting and have been writing regularly. Hopefully you are doing this to provide a body of information to your clients and attract new clients as well. You may be doing this to enhance your SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and bring traffic for your targeted keywords.
Blogging, is not an “If you build it, they will come,” sport. You must do as the newsboys of the last century did and stand on the digital corner and promote your blog. If you don’t you’re wasting your valuable writing effort and time. You can dramatically increase traffic to your blog by using a few tools.
It only takes a small bit of effort to get your posts promoted.
The most effective promotions tools that I’ve used are grouped in three categories:
-
-Social Media
-
-Blog Feeds or Syndication
-
-E-mail marketing
Let’s look at each way to promote your blog content:
Social Media:
Facebook Pages
You can easily link your blog content to your Facebook Business Page with the application Networked Blogs or at a minimum you can manually post links to your blog’s latest articles.
Using either Twitter or preferably HootSuite you can write interesting leads and connect them with shortened URLs that provide trackable stats to measure your results. You can schedule your tweets to show up in your stream so you know they go out when your readers are most often reading.
Su.pr
Su.pr is a syndication service that allows for link shortening and tweeting. You can immediately tweet or schedule the tweet about your blog content. Write a very compelling headline and watch the stats. You can download them and you can also see what suggested posting times will get the more response.
Blog Feeds and Syndication:
RSS
Almost every blog has a built in RSS feed. If yours doesn’t, you need to be sure to make that happen. This allows readers who find your content of value to subscribe in their choice of reader, pulling your content to them. One of the most popular readers is GoogleReader. Personally, I use Bloglines, but to each her own.
Feedburner
Feedburner is the most often thought of feed distribution service. Now owned by Google, it provides great stats and shows how your feed has been used and how many clicks back to your site have been taken to interact with your post.
BlogBurst
This syndication service promotes qualified blogs to high traffic websites. BlogBurst says, “We promote your blog…Our top-tier publishers display your blog content on their sites. Clicks on your byline drive referral traffic to your blog. It is a distribution and matching service designed to widen your blog’s reach and drive traffic to your blog regardless of other affiliations you may have.”
E-mail:
Signature
How many e-mails to you send a day? While the usage of e-mail has dropped off, it is still a primary business communication tool. Provide a link to your blog in your e-mail signature. Feedburner provides code to allow you to have an animated badge with recent headlines, so e-mail recipients will actually see your blog’s headlines and be enticed into reading. But if you choose not to use the Feedburner animated headline rotator, you can at a minimum provide a hyperlink to your blog.
By using these tools I can guarantee you will dramatically increase your blog’s readership. And isn’t this exactly what you want to do?
Related Posts:
How Multicultural Marketing?
This is the second in a series of posts on the why and how of multicultural marketing. The first on why you should “do” multicultural marketing is fine reading. Anne Brumbaugh is our esteemed guest contributor. Anne knows multicultural marketing and she’d be delighted to work with you. Read on for some very instructive information.
Start on the right foot.
Once you’ve come to the realization that you need to consider multicultural marketing – targeting different consumer segments on the basis of ethnic, racial, or cultural group membership – you need to figure out how to get ready to do it. If you want to do a mediocre job, simply read an oversimplified demographic profile of your target group on the internet, reinforce marketing stereotypes that may or may not hold true for the group, replace a few white characters in your ads with members of that group, and translate directly your existing communications into their language
On the other hand, if you want to know how to do a really good job – one that resonates with your subcultural target and has a positive ROI – you need to do a little background work first. Here are five things to do as you consider how you are going to do multicultural marketing.
How #1: Assume nothing, research everything.
As members of the dominant culture, we white Anglos have a difficult time knowing if, when, and how the beliefs, values, and behaviors of other cultural groups differ from ours. (The converse is not so, but that’s for another post.) We may erroneously assume that members of another culture behave just like we do, or that they behave completely differently from how we do. Successful multicultural marketing starts by checking both types of assumptions at the door. Research, particularly qualitative, is absolutely essential for understanding the consumer beliefs about, motivations toward, uses of, and propensity for different product categories and brands among diverse cultural segments of which we are not members.
How #2: Learn the culture of your target.
Not learn about the culture of your target market, learn the culture itself. Read the literature of your target – be sure to include a biography or two, fiction, and non-fiction of different historical periods. Take a history, sociology, or anthropology course about your target to learn the culture’s ethos – what makes its people tick. Identify what popular media your target consumes (television shows, online content, magazines, radio, news, etc.) and consume them yourself to learn what current issues within the community are. You’re doing all this not to learn how to market to them per se, but rather to understand their values and beliefs (see How #1 above).
How #3: Diversify your capabilities.
Marketing to diverse consumers requires a diversity of thought, and you get this diversity of thought from having diverse employees. That doesn’t necessarily mean that if you would like to target subcultural segments X, Y, and Z, you have to have employees from subcultural segments X, Y, and Z (though it doesn’t hurt). It does mean, however, that you have to have different types of people in your firm with a diversity of experiences and backgrounds so that they can question assumptions (see How #1), tap into a broad network of connections and resources that a narrow employee base might not have, and generate more, better ideas than a homogenous group could.
How #4. Understand diversity within diversity.
There is substantial heterogeneity within any segment, and failure to acknowledge it could be disastrous. An African American mom with three kids and a minivan is probably more like her white soccer mom counterpart than she is like a black Caribbean hip hop artist when it comes to purchasing an SUV, and a fifteen year old Hispanic boy is probably more like that same hip hop artist than he is like his own Mexican grandfather when it comes to choosing clothing. Individuals in ethnoracial subcultures differ substantially with regard to how much they identify with their subcultural groups, and these differences influence how they respond to targeted marketing efforts.
How #5: Commit money and talent.
Too often when firms decided to target a particular cultural subsegment, they name someone within their organization of that same subsegment to lead the effort (without regard to his marketing acumen), fund the effort from ad hoc sources (without regard to how much money it will require), and expect immediate results (without regard to how long it will take). Though firms seem reluctant to redeploy their best assets on cultivating a new, unknown, smaller, riskier subsegment than they are used to, successful multicultural marketing requires that they do so. If you’re not going to commit these resources to the effort, you may not yet be ready for multicultural marketing.
Anne M. Brumbaugh is the founder and owner of Anne Brumbaugh Marketing, a marketing consultancy in Charleston, SC, specializing in marketing research, marketplace diversity, and marketing analysis and planning. Dr. Brumbaugh is also an Associate Professor of Marketing at the School of Business, College of Charleston, and holds an MBA with a specialization in marketing and a PhD in business and consumer behavior.
*Photo Credit: Image courtesy of foundphotoslj on Flickr Creative Commons
Related Posts:
Why Multicultural Marketing?
The Connection Maven continues a series of guest blogger posts from a few of our more connected colleagues.
This guest post is from the desk of Anne Brumbaugh who is a marketing guru if I ever met one. When it comes to marketing know-how, Anne is one of the best. Anne’s speciality is multicultural marketing. In this first of a series of blog posts, she clues us all in to the five reasons we must market multi-culturally. In the coming days, we’ll share Anne’s tips on how to implement multicultural marketing.
Why Multicultural Marketing?
The terms “multicultural marketing” and “marketplace diversity” strike fear in the hearts of many marketing managers who have been wildly successful in targeting mainstream customers but who are now facing an increasingly diverse body of consumers and little experience to serve them. Their fear is well founded because they don’t know why, how, who, or what to do about it.
First things first. Why consider multicultural segmentation and marketing? Absolutely not because it’s the feel-good flavor-of-the-day and the “right thing to do.” Poppycock. Here are five reasons why it’s going to be good for your bottom line.
Why #1: It’s where the customers are going.
The 2000 census projected that white non-Hispanic Americans would become a minority majority (i.e., plurality) by 2040 or 2050. Newsflash: I predict that will be more like 2030 as more people intermarry, have children, travel and work here and abroad, and choose to identify with more than one ethnoracial group on the census and other polls. Some white non-Hispanics seem to be on the edge of panic that this day will be some cultural Armageddon. Again, poppycock. It will simply be one more day in a long, inexorable trend that started back when our forefathers (may of whom were ethnic minority outcasts themselves, for the record) came to this land and will be as glorious and full of opportunity (business, marketing, or otherwise) as ever. Embrace it, or at least get over it. If you don’t, your customer base will shrink.
Why #2: It’s where the money is going.
Ethnoracial minority groups that have, for one reason or another, fallen into the lower tail of the socioeconomic distribution are making great strides. Not only will there be more consumers of diverse backgrounds (see Why #1), but they will have more money. No, they will not be buying the upscale homes and fancy sports cars with extra piles of money that wealthy white non-Hispanic Americans (allegedly) have, but they will be buying more and buying better than they ever have in the past. And they remember companies that targeted them with respectful, value-added offerings on the way up.
Why #3: It’s where your competition is going.
Both nature and business abhor a vacuum, and underserved markets will not remain underserved for long. If you don’t get with the program and learn how to target diverse consumers, your competition will. It may not be your biggest, closest competitor, but rather a small shop that’s willing to end run you but good with a little extra effort, creativity, and heart. The customers are there and the money is there. Go for them before someone else does.
Why #4: It’s where the mainstream mindset is going.
Have no fear – white non-Hispanic consumers will remain the largest ethnoracial group even after becoming a “minority.” The problem is, some of them will be gaining an appreciation for the range of ideas, assortment of goods and services, and spice of life that a more diverse America brings to them, and they will want to patronize firms that embrace that. Terms like the “New Mainstream,” “Cultural Creatives,” and “Diversity Seekers” reflect an evolving ethos among current majority white non-Hispanic consumers who value diversity in their lives. Companies that don’t update their appeals to be more inclusive toward everyone may lose these folks as well.
Why #5: It’s where your opportunity to differentiate will be.
It’s Economics and Marketing 101. If all your consumers are the same, seeking the same source of value for the same reasons, you can’t differentiate and you end up playing a price game in a commodity market. On the other hand, the more diverse your consumers are, the more opportunity you have to differentiate – do more, do different, and do better than your competition in the eyes of your consumers. Unfortunately, it’s going to take more money, more knowledge, and more effort than it has in the past, but if misery loves company, at least everyone’s in the same boat. If you can figure out how a particular consumer segment is different, cater to that point of difference, and then deliver on it, you’re going to thrive in this new, multicultural marketplace.
Anne M. Brumbaugh is the founder and owner of Anne Brumbaugh Marketing, a marketing consultancy in Charleston, SC, specializing in marketing research, marketplace diversity, and marketing analysis and planning. Dr. Brumbaugh is also an Associate Professor of Marketing at the School of Business, College of Charleston, and holds an MBA with a specialization in marketing and a PhD in business and consumer behavior.
*Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons user Ray_from_LA
Related Posts:
If You Want to Grow Your Business, Ask the Right Questions
Over the last year I’ve come to admire and respect the work of Positus Consulting. They have provided spot-0n advice that works for our business. Because we respect her advice so much, we’ve asked her to share a bit of wisdom with us.
A guest post from Andra Watkins of Positus Consulting.
You DO want to grow your business
You want to grow your business. It’s what everyone wants, regardless of the season, ebb and flow of the economy or challenges presented by pesky competitors.
One of the keys to growing any business is knowing how and when to ask the right questions of key people. Sometimes, a focus group is the only way to get the biggest group of participants, but at POSITUS, we like to conduct individual interviews whenever possible.
By hiring a third party to individually ask a customer, vendor or employee key questions about your business, you are communicating several things to them that matter. Let’s take a look at each one of them.
Ask!
Your input is important to me. It is so important to you as a business owner that you hired someone to contact people individually to get that feedback. You’re conveying that the interviewee matters to your business by underscoring the crucial nature of their opinions and insights.
Your time is valuable. Individual interviews can often be conducted by telephone, and they can be timed for the convenience of the interviewee. By taking this approach, you’re communicating that time is precious; that you want to make giving feedback as simple as possible for the participant.
Your confidentiality matters. Lots of folks won’t participate in focus groups because they’re intimidated or they feel they cannot reasonably convey what they have to offer in front of a group. As a research tool, individual interviews with a third party allow each participant to speak freely and candidly in a completely confidential setting.
All of your comments are welcome – even the critical ones. By giving a participant a one-on-one forum with an impartial third party, you are underscoring that you want all relevant feedback – the good; the bad; and the ugly. The beauty of a third party is that the information can then be distilled and worded into relevant, meaningful input for dynamic business change.
I want to keep your business. Customers always like to feel special, and seeking out their opinions one-on-one is an ideal way to underscore that you want to keep their business for the long-term. With key customers, individual interviewing can be the key to keeping them in the “key” position for the life of your business.
You have been an instrument of change in my business. Getting one-on-one feedback is worthless without follow up. Once the information has been reviewed and crafted into specific strategies for growth and change, show people AND tell people how their input made a difference. Announce the changes you’ve made. Thank people personally. Be transparent about what you’re doing, helping everyone to see the value of their individual contributions.
Research is like concentrated dynamite
In every case where POSITUS has helped a client achieve double or triple digit growth, individual interviews have been a non-negotiable component of the strategic process. They are more affordable than a focus group, and the input gleaned is like concentrated dynamite. On more than one occasion, we’ve taken an entirely different strategic growth stance based solely on individual feedback, and that information is what helped the business explode with new growth.
And, isn’t that where you really want your business to be?
*flickr Creative Commons image courtesy of Steve SnodgrassRelated Posts:
Do you need a new logo?
Ever wonder if you need a new logo? This funny infographic shares a few of the questions you need to ask yourself to determine if you do.
Related Posts:
Contests and Competitions
There are a number of well known tactics in public relations and marketing that allow you to gain attention and set your business apart.
You’re the winner!
One of the most beloved of all time is the contest. Some contests are sweepstakes where a winner is selected at random after you “enter” a pool of qualified customers. The most famous of these is Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. Others are simple fishbowl lotteries of all entrants, such as the drawing of a business card at your local business networking group meeting. Still others are contests where entrants must comply with a set of rules. The most famous one of these that comes to mind is the Pillsbury Bake Off.
Marketing contests for small businesses
While these examples are associated with large corporations, there are many ways small businesses can implement these same concepts.
Charleston Magazine's Get Cooking Charleston contest requires entrants to use ingredients from Charleston
In Charleston for example, our local magazine just announced their Get Cooking Charleston! competition, a recipe contest and cook-off. The qualifications require all entrants to use ingredients that are either historically or geographically tied to Charleston. One of the sponsors is Piggly Wiggly Carolina whose marketing always makes the connection to Charleston’s culture and way of life. It’s smart of them to sponsor this competition. It supports their brand and positioning in the market. Same for Charleston Magazine.
Contest must be aligned with products & positioning
Your small business can do this too. If you are the maker of a product such as hand painted note cards hold an old fashioned letter writing contest. Perhaps you are a bar, you could hold a competition for the next new menu item or specialty cocktail.
Partnerships extend your reach
When you set up your contest, seek partners who may extend your reach into a new demographic, but perhaps have not yet reached. The classic example is a restaurant who wishes to reach wine aficionados and partners with a local or regional winery. You can share expenses, accomplish a common goal and cross market to each others lists.
Your company’s vendors can be your contest co-sponsors and larger vendors often have partnership marketing dollars that they can share with your small business. Homebuilders do this with their vendors quite frequently.
Enter rather than sponsor
However, you don’t have to hold the competition, you can enter a competition! The Get Cooking Charleston competition is a wonderful opportunity for businesses in the food and beverage industry segment. Want to enter? Begin to look for local, regional and national competitions. You can enter them as an individual or as a representative of your business as Charleston entrepreneur Margaret Bjork of Private Eyes Undies did when she entered the “I am Free Enterprise” contest or just as Charleston singer Amanda L. did when she entered the Folger’s jingle contest.
Enter to win
If you enter a contest, enter to win; advice offered by internationally renowned opera singer Shirley Verrett during an opera master class. She said, “Don’t just try, bring your very best! Believe you’ll win and do everything you can to be the winner.” Do your business and your self proud.
And remember the advice of Thomas Jefferson: “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
Related Posts:
Posted in marketing, public relations | 
Tags: competitions, contests, marketing, PR, promotions, public relations, small business marketing, sweepstakes
When is an image, more than an image?
Image properties and search engine results
While working with a client to create a blogging plan and editorial calendar, we reviewed the firm’s website.
I realized that the company didn’t have proper Alt Tags for their images and that their images were named with the “out of the camera” names common to digital cameras, like image5678.jpg.
Search Engines Like Alt Tags
When they support your SEO goals with proper Alt Tags and image names
By not having keyword relevant Alt Tags and image names as well as captions, this client and you may be missing an opportunity to increase your website’s inclusion in search engine results pages (SERPs.)
Google Likes Keyword Alt Tags
Google and other search engines search the Alt Tags and image titles and include images in their organic search results. In addition, web searchers are now getting more sophisticated in their searches and are searching images just as we search “normal” web content.
Image Properties
If you have a content managed website with a framework such as a Joomla, Drupal or WordPress you have the ability to make these changes. Image Properties for each image allow you to set the Alt Tag for each image. In WordPress, for example which is our preferred CMS, you can set these properties for each image in the Media Library or in an image gallery, such as a gallery created with NextGEN. Use your targeted keywords when adding Alt Tags and you’ll help your SERPs.
WordPress Media Library and Image Names
In the past when naming images, webmasters often used underscores between words in an image name. Underscores are not comprehensible to search engines so you should instead use hyphens between words. If you are using WordPress, you can set the name of the image in the Media Library when you import the image. WordPress does not require you to add the hyphens. Just remember to use keyword rich names for images that are relevant to the image content and post content.
Image Selection
When you select images for your blog posts, select images that are relevant to the post’s content and give them captions that are also relevant to the content. When you place the image in the page, place it near the most relevant content.
Images Can Support SEO Goals
Following these few guidelines will support your search engine optimization goals and will help your website’s rankings. If you’ve not followed these procedures in the past, you can update your site or have your webmaster do this for you. By doing this you will also be freshening up your content as well.
**picture frame image courtesy of designshard on flickr creative commons
Related Posts:
Keeping your marketing communications current
Lessons learned
I’ve recently “moved houses” as our British friends say. In doing so, I’ve touched every piece of stuff that I own and have come to the conclusion that there is too much of it. The other realization that crystallized during this process is that some of the stuff should have been ditched long ago. Some items that I’d been keeping for sentimental reasons no longer have value, or function as they should, so they have been purged or donated to others who can use them.
It occurs to me that it’s the same with a company’s marketing, public relations and advertising. Every so often, we need to evaluate to determine if the things we’ve kept have any use, purpose or even if they are functioning for our firm.
5 Steps to Stay Current
So here are my recommendations:
- Annually review your advertising placements and determine which ones have actually served your firm. For example, are you still using the printed Yellow Pages? If so, determine how many new customers you received from this expense.
- Annually review your website for functionality. Digital technology changes so fast and so often that a website designed and coded 3 years ago may now be out of date functionally.
- Monthly (or weekly) review your website for updated content. Search engines regularly scan websites and index fresh content. As a matter of fact, they have a preference for fresh content. Blogging, project photos, recent honors and awards, client testimonials and reviews are all ways to add freshness to your site.
- Every 5 years review your branding. Your branding should be something that will be relevant for many years so while you may not need rebranding it may need freshening up. In the last few years, brands such as Wal-Mart and ATT have revised their identities and messaging to be more contemporary. Your firm should do the same.
- Annually review your financial allocations for marketing, public relations and promotions. If the competitive space in which your company performs is crowded, you may need to step up your game in order to stand out. You might do this by adding new activities, placements, or marketing personnel. You may not need to add anything to your budget; you may just need to shift your priorities. But, you won’t know until you evaluate.
Be proactive for better results
If you undertake these five items, you can be sure you won’t be in the position that I was when I moved and can be assured that your marketing communications will be more current.
photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons image from ARTS
Related Posts:
Posted in advertising, marketing, public relations |
Tags: advertising, communications, marketing, public relations
Better blog posts
I’m a member of a group blog, Dress4Dinner, a blog whose goal is to “bring back dinner” as a way to entertain in the home and “make it sexy” again. We each host a dinner party in our homes and write about our planning, execution and wrap up of the event. One of my blogging partners asked for advice on how to dress up her posts so they are more visually appealing and easier to read.
She took note of my use of subheads and the way images were being displayed in the posts and said she’d like to “dress up her posts a bit.” Here are the things that I suggested to her.
Use subheads like this
First, using subheads related to the following paragraph is a tidy way to eliminate long blocks of unbroken copy. Second, for the reader with little time, subheads allow for quick scanning of pages as well. Third, you can make them keyword rich and support your SEO goals.
Use images to add impact
There are many sources of images. A few that I’ve used are royalty free stock sites such as iStock and Stock.XCHNG. Another good source of images for blogs is flickr creative commons attribution license area. A note: There are restrictions on the usage of all these sites’ images. You must adhere to the terms of use for each site and each work.
I like to use image management extensions that provide more flexibility in your blog posts. In our WordPress based blogs and websites created for our clients, we use the NextGEN gallery tools. You can display a group of images as thumbnails, as a slide show or as an image gallery. While the gallery options in WordPress have improved, they are still not optimal. NextGEN is very easy to manage and use and really dresses up your blog posts.
Other tips on writing better blog posts
Several posts of recent have offered tips and thoughts on how to create compelling and punchy content. HubSpot’s blog post addresses ways to create posts that are designed to support your SEO and Internet Marketing goals. Robert Holland on Ragan offers his tips to make blog posts sticky.
To paraphrase what my high schools friends would say to me in 1973, “write on.”
Related Posts:
FastCompany asks, “Daddy, what is a brand?”
Branding explored
Tonight I’ll be leading a workshop at the Charleston Center For Women with Shauna Heathman of Mackenzie Image Consultants. We’ll be speaking about how to discover your personal brand.
So, my antennae are out and I’m hyper aware of articles regarding branding and this one crossed my bow. Like a hurricane! Graham Button is smack on.
However, I do take a bit of an issue with his inference that we Boomers are out the door with our “limited shelf life.” Unlike spoiled milk, we aren’t done yet. We still hold the reins of a great amount of wealth and influence. The question I’d rather see asked is, “How many of us are following the tide of the social media revolution?” Women of my generation are the fastest growing group on Facebook and carry the purse for our generation.
His take on women of the Millennial generation is absolutely precise. I work with many of these women and there is no doubt that they will put forward the first woman president.
He references the Net Promoter Score which one of my colleagues has been using for many years.
So go read the article and share your thoughts with me.
A revolution deconstructed
If you’re still struggling to understand the changes in marketing, advertising and public relations, this article pulls it all together in 10 succinct points and ends with a poetic appeal.
Powerful words
If you don’t have time to read the article, watch this video. It will give you something to think about today.
Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.
Typography Animation project for class
Poem by Taylor Mali (www.TaylorMali.com)
