I’ve been seeing a lot about Facebook in the news lately and I’m pretty sure they have more pressing issues than policing a video I shared two years ago without comment!
Facebook is getting stupider by the day
How to Have a Healthier Relationship With Social Media
Put an end to the mindless doomscrolling, once and for all: How to Have a Healthier Relationship With Social Media
On privacy and your ‘online life’
Here are some (what I think) are compelling ideas on privacy and your ‘online life’ from multiple perspectives. Dig in!
How will these perspectives inform you? What, if any online behaviors will you change? I’m thinking about it…
Bonus!
The power of podcasting: How to boost your reputation and search engine rankings
Podcasting is hot and a must-use SEO tactic, says contributor Sherry Bonelli. Here is Part 1 of a three-part series on how to use podcasts to boost your SEO and brand reputation.
How to create content to support local SEO and rock the rankings
Are you looking for ways to increase your organic visibility and rankings in local search results? Contributor Kristopher Jones shares how to shine in local search results using locally focused content. Source: How to create content to support local SEO and rock the rankings
Survey: Social Media Marketing Prioritized in SEO Efforts
Marketers are continuing to invest in SEO, and as they do so, research shows that they are shifting their focus toward social media marketing in the new year.
Source: Survey: Social Media Marketing Prioritized in SEO Efforts | KoMarketing
Top 10 Ways To Use Pinterest To Grow Your Business
Are you a pinterest user?
As the 3rd most popular social network site in the United States, having an active Pinterest strategy should be a priority for your small business. If you aren’t quite sure how exactly Pinterest can work for you, here are 10 great ways to use Pinterest for your small business, courtesy of Karen Leeland.
The primary way I use Pinterest is to find and share great visual content. I can use it to find the right image or infographic for my post but having created a post that has rich visual content, I also want to use Pinterest to share that content from my blog so that it drives people to my website. Make sense? Questions? Feedback?
Do Not Build Your ‘Brand House’ On Rented Land…
Facebook, Google+ and other social networks are great tools, but in this week’s edition of This Old Marketing with Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose, they reference a ‘readworthy’ article that I’ll be referencing from now on. Here’s a sample:
Quick: Name one successful publisher that built its brand on the back of a social platform? Can’t do it? Neither can I, unless you count sites like UpWorthy. And those flying near the social network sun risk getting seriously burned. There’s a reason publishers don’t build on top of social platforms: publishers are an independent lot, and they naturally understand the value of owning your own domain. Publishers don’t want to be beholden to the shifting sands of inscrutable platform policies. So why on earth would a brand?
Go to the source: To Be Clear: Do Not Build Your Brand House On Land You Don’t Own | John Battelle’s Search Blog.
I’ve been using this ‘concept’ of rented land in my courses for years so I’m sure it’s not original. John Batelle’s article is definitely worth the read. You can download Joe and Robert’s podcast here.
How to save things in Google+
One of my favorite clients is trying to get a handle on how to save things for later in Google+. Here’s a quick pass at a couple of ideas…
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, right? Here’s a minimalist workflow for content and thought leadership marketing that will help you get found when people are looking for you and what you do in the coming year…
The beautiful thing about this simple workflow is that you have to do the reading anyway in order to maintain your expert status — why not turn it into thought leadership marketing? Also every tool is free and completely cross platform and it could all be executed from a $199 Chromebook. I explain here:
How could I explain this more clearly or make this post better? Comment below or use the contact form above…
Friend, mentor and client Nilofer Merchant posted recently about the problem of fragmentation:
It’s a fragmented world. And it’s only becoming more so. It used to be that when people wrote, they wrote more deeply. In the early days of the web (pre-twitter), I remember hand picking the few voices I would listen to and then putting them into my RSS feeder and checking for their essays. Essays, not tweets, were the way we shared what we were thinking. But as “content” has become more important to maintain a standing online, more and more people are entering into the fray. More and more people who may not even have a point of view to advocate but just want to participate in the conversation.
As content becomes more fragmented, you could try and compete with that by doing more and more, by curating other people’s content, by then running your content through Twylah, by having that “twitter magazine” come out which puts all your tweets and links in one place so that people can catch it if they missed each particular one.
Or you could do the opposite. You could go deep. You could be that voice that everyone listens to because when it speaks, it is so deep and rich that it’s worth slowing down to listen to. Sort of a Morgan Freeman voice, in the times of Justin Bieber bop. Maybe it will allow the light of an idea to be seen more clearly.” There’s more at the source: In a fragmented world, go deep – Nilofer Merchant
If I were talking with Nilofer, I’d gently push back on this one. ‘Going deep’ does not preclude using Twylah; rather, I think, the answer to fragmentation and ‘going deep’ is focus…
When I first started blogging I was not confident in my own skillset and my focus was a mile wide and six inches deep. My tagline was “Marketing, Sales and Technology for small business, non-profits and academic institutions”. It makes me laugh now because there are no dozen websites that can cover THIS landscape effectively. I used to curate anything and everything related to those topics sometimes posting over 20 times a day! I got traffic but it wasn’t really relevant and it didn’t get me customers. Over time, Nilofer helped me go deep and realize my ‘onlyness’ was really helping thinkers to become thought leaders through the use of a minimal toolkit for content marketing. Now my tagline is “content marketing for thought leadership” and I help experts get found when people are looking for what they do. By going deeper, I may lose the opportunity to develop a small business website but I might gain the opportunity to work with a TED Fellow like Nina Tandon which is much more rewarding in the long run. Now, too, I’m more confident in my onlyness, I only post a couple of times per week…
Nilofer and I have had this discussion before and I think we both agree: If our thoughts are going to resonate with our target audience we need to understand the questions they are asking and align our answers with their queries. If we position ourselves as the obvious answer to the questions of the people we want to attract, we will get found when people are looking for ‘that one voice’. It’s not good enough however simply to think deep thoughts; we need to let people know that we are thinking them. Nilofer is a great thinker on strategy but I direct my energy toward ‘thoughts, tools and tactics’ for content marketing and ‘thought leadership’ marketing; I think the answer here is not either/or it’s both/and. I don’t think Nilofer’s saying that Twylah is a bad thing and I think she’d agree you need to go deep thoughtwise AND master ‘thought leadership’ marketing toolwise because the two go together like peanut butter and chocolate — it’s just that mindlessly tweeting and retweeting doesn’t do much to add value…
In closing, here are the 3 tools I recommend for ‘thought leadership’ marketing:
- Google Reader
- WordPress
- Twylah
Ed. 2019: The current version of this list would be:
- Google News or Inoreader
- WordPress
- Buffer
I posted about them here just last week. They are the tools that will help you get found when you decide to ‘go deep’ and become the one voice [because it doesn’t matter how deep you go if no one can find you]…
Sometimes, I think I post more about how much I love Twylah than the folks at Twylah do. Whether that’s true or not, I’m a huge fan and the main reason why is Twylah is the only social networking tool I know of that actually adds Search Engine Optimization [SEO] to your domain simply by tweeting. Still, if the DNS manager of your domain host is unfamiliar territory you may not be getting the maximum value out of Twylah and Twitter. I talk you through it here…
So, in summary, the three things you must do are:
- Use Twylah
- Add the Twylah widget to your WordPress sidebar
- Host Twylah on your domain
Questions? Feedback? Comment below or connect with me so we can talk about how this applies to you and your situation…
Related articles
- Why Twylah is my ultimate lifestream repository… (e1evation.com)
- Getting Things Done [GTD] for blogging and bloggers (e1evation.com)
- “Freeing information from jobs” UPDATED 10/8/2012 (e1evation.com)
- 3.5 tools for effective content marketing in the #socialera (e1evation.com)
Going back to our Getting Things Done [GTD] decision diagram for a minute…
The in basket I’m using more often than not is Google Reader. When I see ‘actionable’ content, I decide where is the best place to share that content using the following diagram:
I focused in an earlier post about sharing via Twylah and other tools — today the focus is on curation and blogging as a means of Getting Things Done [GTD]…
How do I decide that something is bloggable? Well here are some guidelines that I use…
- When I come across content that is so brilliant that I could have written it myself if I would only take the time. Seriously, when I come across really good content that I want to expound upon and call out to my clients and readers…
- When I find a great illustration or infographic
- When I find a great YouTube video
- When commenting on this content gives me a change to share something about my brand by agreeing, disagreeing, adding or subtracting…
You get the idea, right? Anything I find on the Internet is fair game as long as I remember to do three things:
- Block quote and indent the content I am curating
- Provide a link back to the original source
- Be ready to move the content if requested by the owner
I firmly believe that when you curate effectively everybody wins. The original author gives exposure to my readers. My readers get a different perspective. Finally, my post is easier to write and I get the Search Engine Optimization [SEO] benefits from the content I curate…
Here are some thoughts from Suzanne Bird-Harris and a few others on the rationale for curation and some ideas on how to structure a curative post along with a screencast on how I do it using Windows Live Writer, a free blog editor from Microsoft…
Personally? I think curation is one of the best ways to supplement the original thinking on my blog. Here are some thoughts on curation in the blogging process…
Personally? I think curation is one of the best ways to supplement the original thinking on my blog. Here are some thoughts on curation in the blogging process…
Personally? I think curation is one of the best ways to supplement the original thinking on my blog. Here are some thoughts on curation in the blogging process…
http://storify.com/e1evation/thoughts-on-getting-things-done-gtd-in-curation
Here’s the diagram from the video…
Heidi Cohen shares this valuable tidbit today:
About nine out of ten B2B marketers use social media to distribute their content marketing according to recent research by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. On average these marketers use five social media sites to spread their content marketing more broadly through social sharing.
For B2B marketers, this requires that your content marketing be formatted to work well on the social media platforms where you place it and that you encourage readers to share it. (Here’s a chart showing how to leverage different types of content marketing across social media.)
Respondents cited fourteen different social media platforms that they used to distribute content. (Here’s additional research and analysis from the content marketing survey.) Half of the social media venues were used by over 20% of respondents.
Source: Social Media: Where to Distribute B2B Content Marketing [Research/Chart] | Heidi Cohen
Go to the source if you’d like to have the rest of Heidi’s insights – come back here if you’re not sure how to put them into practice!
Related articles
- Almost All B2B Marketers Do Content Marketing, But Only 36 Percent Think It’s Effective [STUDY] (impressiveweb.net)
- 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends (marketingprofs.com)
- 100+ B2B Content Marketing Statistics for 2013 (toprankblog.com)
- B2B & Inbound Marketing Tips: Content Marketing Edition (amplify-interactive.com)
- 18 Growing B2B Content Marketing Trends to Share – Social Media B2B (3forward.com)
- Five Traits of Successful B2B Content Marketers (socialmediatoday.com)
- Social Marketing Budgets Increase For B2Bs (mediapost.com)
- 18 Growing B2B Content Marketing Trends to Share (socialmediab2b.com)
- Study: LinkedIn Leads in B2B Marketing for the First Time (socialtimes.com)
- Research Finds B2B Marketers Increasing Investments in Online Video for Content Marketing (reelseo.com)
Guy Kawasaki has a clever quote on Inbound Marketing. It goes like this:
“If you have more money than brains, spend it on outbound marketing but if you have more brains then money, spend it on inbound marketing”.
Let’s take a look at inbound marketing HubSpot style…
Source: blog.hubspot.com via Todd on Pinterest
With all due respect to Guy, inbound marketing may be smarter, but many of the top tier inbound marketing ‘suites’ still carry a hefty price tag. Here are 4 that emphasize content marketing and curation that come to mind [listed most expensive first]:
- All-in-One Marketing Software | Inbound Marketing with HubSpot
- Content Curation & Online Marketing Solution – Curata
- Share Ideas that matter | Scoop.it
- Content marketing software to find and share great content | Intigi
My own ‘e1evation workflow‘ on the other hand costs less than $25 per year if you know what you’re doing and all the products used meet the following criteria:
- Best in class
- Free or freemium
- Completely cross platform down to the smartphone level
Great inbound marketing doesn’t have to cost and arm and a leg. Comment below or connect with me so we can talk about how this applies to you and your situation. Remember, the key is to get found when people are looking for you and what you do and that doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg!
[contact-form][contact-field class="zem_slink" title="Record label" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_label" rel="wikipedia" target="_blank">label</a>='Name' type="name" required="1" label="Name"/][contact-field label="Email" type="email" required="1"/][contact-field label="Website" type="url"/][contact-field label="Comment" type="textarea" required="1"/][/contact-form]
Related articles
- How to Succeed at Inbound Marketing and Then Totally Fail (business2community.com)
- How To Succeed At Inbound Marketing And Then Totally Fail (cmo.com)
- Putting the Content in Content Marketing (business2community.com)
- The Laws of Attraction: How Smart Inbound (Internet) Marketing Works (business2community.com)
- The Power of Influential Content in Inbound Marketing (business2community.com)
- 4 Simple Tips For Ensuring Inbound Marketing Success (weidert.com)
- Top 5 SEO Tips For Inbound Marketing (business2community.com)
- Infographic: The Inbound Marketing Process (marketingtechblog.com)
- Inbound Marketing: Fundamentals of Business Blogging (business2community.com)
- Big Data, The Key to Enterprise Inbound Marketing (business2community.com)
There are three main reasons why I think of Twylah as my ULTIMATE lifestream repository. First, let me share a definition of ‘lifestreaming‘ for those of you unfamiliar with the concept:
The term lifestream was coined by Eric Freeman and David Gelernter at Yale University in the mid-1990s to describe “…a time-ordered stream of documents that functions as a diary of your electronic life; every document you create and every document other people send you is stored in your lifestream. The tail of your stream contains documents from the past (starting with your electronic birth certificate). Moving away from the tail and toward the present, your stream contains more recent documents — papers in progress or new electronic mail; other documents (pictures, correspondence, bills, movies, voice mail, software) are stored in between. Moving beyond the present and into the future, the stream contains documents you will need: reminders, calendar items, to-do lists.”[1]
Lifestreams are also referred to as social activity streams or social streams.
Social network aggregators adapt Freeman and Gelernters original concept to address the vast flows of personal information and exchange created by social network services such as MySpace or Facebook “Web companies large and small are embracing this stream” of providing lifestreaming.[2] Other online applications have emerged to facilitate a users lifestream. Posterous offers a variety of unique features to enhance its basic blogging function. Tumblr is a similar concept, but with slightly different features.” via Lifestreaming – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Now, why do I think Twylah is the ultimate lifestreaming tool? Because…
- Twylah can be the ultimate container for EVERYTHING you curate or create online [because you can ultimately get EVERYTHING into Twitter!]
- Twylah drives enagement 40x better than Twitter alone
- Twylah converts your tweets into valuable Search Engine Optimization [SEO]
Here’s how it works:
Bottom line? If you can get it to Twitter, Twylah will do the rest. Automatically! Now, because I’d rather talk than type, I’ll talk you through the concept below…
Questions? Feedback? Comment below…
I’m always trying to explain things in a way that is as simple as possible but no simpler, so I thought of another way to take a pass at David Allen’s Getting Things Done [GTD] principles as applied to the curation process. Here is the workflow map:
Here is how I apply it to the curation process:
Now, let me talk you through it:
Here are the two posts I mentioned in the screencast:
The ever brilliant Heidi Cohen shares this:
Pinterest is the fourth largest source of traffic in the world according to data from Shareaholic. Pinterest’s traffic has doubled since May making it an important entryway to your business.
Since the beginning of 2012, Pinterest has passed other social media platforms including LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Twitter and StubbleUpon, in terms of the amount of traffic it refers to other sites. Additionally, Pinterest refers more traffic than Bing and Yahoo. (Here are nineteen other reasons to use Pinterest with charts.)” Get the rest here: Pinterest: The Best New Source of Traffic [Research] | Heidi Cohen.
I don’t want to poison your well, but take a hard look at this infographic and then scroll down to my comments below…
5 steps to make your social content great [infographic] – Holy Kaw!.
For the most part, I agree these are 5 important steps, but I think the sequence is way out of whack. For example; how can you brainstorm if you haven’t pondered the market. Me? I think if the objective is to be in alignment with your customer’s value demand the sequence should go like this:
- Ponder the market
- Brainstorm
- Big idea
- Plan delivery
- Create and Share
- Kick ass! [I think my friend Nilofer would insert that!]
I don’t know — I’m just a humble internet mechanic! What do you think?
Bright, shiny objects! 
You must be logged in to post a comment.