Thought leadership strategy and tactics

Thought leadership strategy is essential for getting found in Google but how to execute with the fewest moving parts is elegance! DaVinci said “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” but what does that look like in a thought leadership workflow? Let’s start with some thoughts from Google Plus ‘meister’ Mark Traphagen:

Of Mark’s 5 points, items 1,3 & 5 are what Covey would call ‘private victories’ and items 2 & 4 are related to ‘public victories’. You can possess items 1, 3 & 5 in abundance but unless you using the wonderful tools we have at our fingertips to make your thoughts searchable, findable, knowable, shareable and memorable, you are missing the opportunity to become credible on a bigger scale. You will never be found in the ‘zero moment of truth‘ unless you treat Google as an ally, not an adversary to be tricked or gamed.

So then, if you’re with me so far, let me propose a workflow for thought leadership strategy with only 3 moving parts for you to consider:

A thought leadership workflow

I’ll talk you through it here:

Bonus Feedly video!

Social media shortcuts featuring Google Plus

Here are 5 social media shortcuts featuring Google Plus that could add years to your life and lift to your search engine ranking page! Here are [some of] my favorite shortcuts.

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I’ll talk you through it here!

Google Plus haters I love you!

Google Plus haters thank you for perpetuating the myth about Google Plus being a ghost town. You’re like a guy with a tiny schwanz posting about how size doesn’t matter! Everybody knows you’re overcompensating for something…

Believe me, I used to be a hater, too! As an instructor in Content Marketing, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media at NWTC, my world was perfect until Google Plus came along. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were all I needed until I learned last fall that Google doesn’t index any of them. Then I got religion. And traffic. And clients. And now thanks to Google Plus, I get higher rating for the word elevation than Bono of U2! Now that’s the power of Google Plus for elevation in seo…

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Start your education here:

And continue on here:
https://storify.com/toddlohenry/reasons-why-i-believe

I’ll see you at the top of the serps!!!

How to Get More Interaction on Google+

How to Get More Interaction on Google+ (Infographic) | Entrepreneur.com.

Google Authorship is not working; what do I do now?

Google Authorship is not working. Yesterday, Google confirmed it would no longer index authorship data. For those of you who were unaware of Google Authorship, you saved yourself a lot of time and energy but may have missed out on search engine optimization benefits while it was active. Those of you who tried to follow Google’s cues are probably experiencing a serious case of WTF?! In either case, you have to ask yourself what’s next? Here’s a short synopsis of the Google Authorship ‘phenomenon’.

https://storify.com/toddlohenry/the-end-of-google-authorship

So, if Google Authorship is not working, it appears that the ‘next big thing’ in search engine optimization is to understand schema and deploy it on your sites and use it with every post. I’ll continue to share what I learn here. If you’d like to chat about it, please comment below or connect with me in social media. I am the only Todd Lohenry in the world so I am easy to find!

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Get Exactly What You Asked For On Google Using These Tips

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Social Media Cheatsheet for 2014

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Google CTR Study: How User Intent Impacts Google Click-Through Rates

Google CTR Study: How User Intent Impacts Google Click-Through Rates.

Thoughts on WordPress maintenance

Maintaining your self-hosted WordPress is more than just clicking the update button. Here are some thoughts on what to do next…

A care package for my clients…

http://storify.com/toddlohenry/wordpress-maintenance

Thoughts on using Chrome effectively…

…for content marketers and thought leaders!

Thoughts on getting the most out of Chrome for content marketing…

http://storify.com/toddlohenry/chrome-tips-and-tricks

What Is The Purpose Of Your Website?

website ideas

What is the purpose of your website is a great question to ask yourself from time to time…

How do you begin to shape a purposeful… website? Old or new, your best bet is to keep it simple. Basically, you have three strategic options:

  1. Sell products and services
  2. Generate leads
  3. Establish credentials

Option 1, an e-commerce site, requires the biggest development and marketing budgets. It produces direct revenue and measurable profit, as well as sales leads.

Option 2, a lead-generation site, can be developed and marketed for less (generally speaking), but still requires a hefty investment. It produces qualified, trackable sales leads.

Option 3, a credentials site, is the simplest and least expensive option. It makes a good impression on people who know who you are, but won’t help you find new leads or customers.

How do you know which option is right for you? A lot of factors go into that decision, with budget being one of the most important….  For now, suffice to say that many companies have lead-generation ambitions but only a credentials budget.

Source: What Is The Purpose Of Your Website? – Forbes

Why are we doing this and what will it get us are both great questions to back up and ask yourself from time to time…

http://storify.com/toddlohenry/what-is-the-purpose-of-a-website

6 Powerful Reasons Why you Should include Images in your Marketing

Uberblogger Jeff Bullas writes:

If you have an online store, issue press releases or even just have a Facebook business “page”, then here are 6 reasons to publish images and photos as part of your business marketing tactics.

  • Articles with images get 94% more total views
  • Including a Photo and a video in a press release increases views by over 45%
  • 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business when an image shows up in local search results
  • In an ecommerce site, 67% of consumers say the quality of a product image is “very important” in selecting and purchasing a product
  • In an online store, customers think that the quality of a products image is more important than product-specific information (63%), a long description (54%) and ratings and reviews (53%)
  • Engagement rate on Facebook for photos averages 0.37% where text only is 0.27% (this translates to a 37% higher level of engagement for photos over text)

via 6 Powerful Reasons Why you Should include Images in your Marketing – Infographic.

Here are a couple of free tools I use to create more visually interesting content for my blog:

and here is a list of 14 more from Buffer…

Here are the Chrome extensions…

…I use and recommend. I manage them with an extension called ‘Context’ which allows me to load and unload bundles of extensions on the fly. This is the group that is always on…

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Want to know why I use one or what it does? Either look it up in the Chrome store or ask in the comments below…

Inbox tabs in Gmail…

Inbox Tabs in Gmail are a valuable tool for making sure you handle your most important email first. Watch this video and see not only how it works at the desktop level but also on iOS and Android as well…

If you like that, follow it up with my favorite 7+ Gmail features…

Feedly; processing and publishing content on the go…

 

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First off, this series is going to be a little like Star Wars in that I’m starting the story kind of in the middle. I was most inspired to start my new set of mobile screen casts focusing on Feedly which to me may be the single most important tool in the content marketers toolbox.

First a little bit of review. I said earlier other places that if you want to be a thought leader on the Internet you have to be able to manage all of your personal information well. By this I mean you’ll never be a big dog out on the Internet if you can’t get off the porch of your inbox. In other posts I’ve talked about how the single most important thought for me is to get newsletters and other just in case information out of my inbox into a feed reader. Feedly is the only feed reader that meets my five criteria for recommended application. I’ve included that list again here:

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In his classic book Getting Things Done David Allen recommends that we use exactly as many containers as we need and not a single one more. Feedly is the container that I use and recommend both for processing and producing content to drive my content marketing campaigns. In the video below I’ll take you through the process of configuring Feedly for mobile use and take you through the processing, producing, and postproduction phases of using Feedly define the content you need to feed YOUR content marketing campaigns.

Where would you like me to go with this? What topics did I miss? Please let me know in the comments below…

Things You Need to Know about Web Hosting

Things You Need to Know about Web Hosting | Visual.ly.

Why YouTube Rocks!

Is it the ability to create engaging content like this that gets your message across in an unforgettable way?

Or, is it because it’s a place where people actually go to get brand messaging?

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You tell me!

Managing Chrome extensions

Extensions

I think managing Chrome extensions is a critical factor for success in your social media endeavors. Many people don’t realize how many resources a chrome extension can use. I’m always trying to whittle down my toolkit to the minimum number necessary to do the work that I need to do. That’s why I use an extension called Context.

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Context allows me to swap out bundles of extensions and apps based on my activity at the time. It allows you to create a set of always enabled extensions and then select bundles of additional extensions. As an example I have a group of about five extensions I use when I’m doing website development work but I only need them during that time. My philosophy is if I don’t need it at the moment I shouldn’t have it loaded so I use Context to swap them out. Allow me to demonstrate…

Have questions about anything you see here? Use the comments to connect…

When to Post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest

When trying to get found on the internet, leave no stone unturned. Learn not only how but when to share:

There are many tools you can use to gauge your timing. HootSuite’s functionality enables you to automatically schedule your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn updates based on your followers’ engagement patterns. A great app I just discovered called SocialBro analyzes the timelines of your followers and creates a “best time to tweet” report that tells you when you should be tweeting to maximize retweets and replies. Topsy, an app that has been around for a few years, performs social network trend analysis. Timing+ helps you decide when it’s best to post on Google+ by evaluating your historical post data. SocialFlow uses real-time data to understand the constantly changing interests of your audience and maps your content to the windows where you’ll get the most attention.

via When to Post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest (Infographic) – Yahoo Small Business Advisor.

Remember to post anything really good to your blog first and then share it from there…

#SXSWi 2014 Recap: High on Hashtags…

Jimmy Fallon’s riff on hashtags is fast becoming a social meme. In case you’ve been living under a rock, here it is…

This week at SXSW, some folks were looking beyond Fallon to crack the code. Conclusion?:

Hashtags help discovery of trends, topics, sentiment.

Go to the source: #SXSWi 2014 Recap: High on Hashtags | Search Engine Journal.

I believe that smart people use #hashtags not only to label but DISCOVER the best content. Ask me why in the comments…

Do Not Build Your ‘Brand House’ On Rented Land…

English: House for sale near Ardlethen

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.

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