iWebEarth

Telling stories is an acquired skill. It means learning what makes audiences think critically and laugh heartily. But, most importantly, it means making them part of your stories.

 
Knowing audiences and approaching them successfully is what makes a good storyteller. Not surprisingly, it is also what makes a good marketer. That’s the first lesson that emerges from this week’s top five news stories on InboundMarketing.com:

Act as a storyteller whether you are delivering public speeches or producing other content. In order to engage an audience, you need to offer high-quality content with ease.

Nick Morgan, author of Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, suggests you accomplish this by getting passionate about your subject, adopting purposeful action and gaining storytelling skills. Content in all its forms is remarkable, he argues, when it “informs and entertains at the same time.”

2. The Marketing Myth of “Free” Social Media
Author: Tom Foremski
Lesson: Pay The Price of Social Media

If you want to enhance your online footprint in the social mediasphere, you have to make a commitment. Actually, four of them:

• Time. It comes in the form of spending time instead of spending money.
• Expert. It takes a brand champion to deliver creative content.
• Measurement. It might get costly to measure ROI.
• Research. It requires relevant research for producing original content.

These points demonstrate that social media requires a lot of input. Become aware of the work associated with maintaining social networks and make the necessary commitments.

3. Blogging Is Dying; Twitter Is to Blame
Author: Joseph Jaffe
Lesson: Choose Words Carefully

Become selective with word usage to produce quality content. With its 140-character limit, micro-blogging platform Twitter demonstrates the importance of word choice in expressing ideas. If an idea can be fully expressed in less than 140 characters, would it be worth blogging about?

Micro-blogging makes us more creative when picking blogging ideas. You discover new topics and learn to prioritize them better. In this sense, Twitter is enhancing blogging, not killing it.

4. E-mail Spending to Grow to $2 Billion by 2014
Author: Dianna Dilworth
Lesson: Bridge Email to Social

Make a strong connection between your email marketing and social networking efforts. According to a new Forrester Research report e-mail marketing spending in the U.S. will increase to $2 billion by 2014. “While social media has primarily been a tool for personal communications, marketers have to figure out how to bridge the conversation from the e-mail inbox to the social inbox,” said David Daniels, research VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research.

5. Bing Keeps Growing
Author: Josh Catone
Lesson: Be Truly Remarkable

To compete with industry leaders, you need to be truly remarkable. No matter the size of your marketing budget, people won’t be interested in your product unless it brings them real change. Users are actively looking for such change in Microsoft’s search engine Bing.

Though Bing is growing and currently has 16.7% searcher penetration, it doesn’t offer a legitimate incentive for people to drop Google. “Switching search engines is painless, but if there is hardly a difference in results then why switch,” comments Eric Ungs.

Photo Credit: armadillo444

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by David Carberry

A few weeks ago I attended the Maryland Chamber of Commerce session on Social Media and Online Marketing with guest host Mario Armstrong from XM radio. The panel consisted of Greg Cangialosi, CEO of Blue Sky Factory, Matt Goddard, CEO of r2integrated and Leah Messina, CEO of Sinuate Media.

The
panelists spoke about various topics such as; online tools, social
marketing and challenges their clients face. Some good points were made
throughout the session however, as most panels go, they were all
intertwined and scattered. I have highlighted some of the main items
that are beneficial to all businesses either as a refresher or as new
information.

Communities

How are your customers
currently buying items or services? Social media outlets such as
Twitter don’t work for everyone or every business. Let’s take a
business such as a local plumber or heating specialist. When do you
need a plumber? Typically when something is wrong! Most people will
more than likely pick up a phone book or do an online directory search.
It’s doubtful that anyone will follow a plumber’s business on Twitter.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a recommendation for a
plumber, Twitter or Facebook might be the perfect place for you.
According to Goddard, “Social media is really about reducing a risk by
reaching out to like-minded peers. It’s our way of saying, how do I not
make a bad decision?” We go get advice and it’s sitting inside these
communities, we are getting the information when the conversation is
happening and it’s all about reducing the risk. The social tools that
exist are about streamlining the process.

LinkedIn.com has been
around longer than Twitter and it isn’t getting as much hype. LinkedIn
is a risk reduction and helps members make better decisions on how to
build relationships. It’s Quality over Quantity. Your business should
be tied to your area of expertise, local community or industry
specialty. If you are a local business in a specific trade industry try
to focus on what you do and important topics that are relevant.

The Clutter

There’s
really no need to tweet about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich you
just ate. According to Cangialosi , “THERE’S A LOT OF A LOT! ” There is
no way we are paying attention to everything you have written. There is
so much white noise that it is crucial for businesses to stay focused.
Try to use important keywords or tags that can be searched for easily.

Blue Sky Factory leverages social media technology by using Hubspot.
The Hubspot tool looks at web analytics and takes all the keywords you
want to optimize and ranks the conversations that are really important.
Blue Sky’s goal is to engage the community, cut through the clutter,
and sharpen the focus.

Tools and Tracking

Messina
recommended several different tools which keep a watchful eye on what
people are saying about your product or who might be interested.
Search.twitter.com – Twitter’s basic search tool
Google alerts – a great way to have information pushed instead of searching with the other tools
icerocket.com – a social and search tool
radian6 – a monitoring source for your brand across the web
Chi.mp – helps steam line across multiple accounts
Dragon Search – social media calculator

One tool that was not mentioned was Twitter Analyzer, which is a tool that is fun to explore.

Rule of Thumb to Execute Social Media

Mario’s
last question to the panel was, “How much time do you have for all of
your social responsibilities? We all know that owning a dog can be
free, but don’t you have to nurture it?”

Leah recommends before
you update your Twitter account to spend 2 hours researching and
compile a list of daily social media updates. Update once in the
morning and at the end of the day. Leah typically puts aside 1 hour a
day for updates.

Greg doesn’t use Twitter to update his Facebook
account. The Twitter stream is primarily used for business and he
separates his personal account from corporate account. He does his
tweets in spurts. He recommends that your conversations grow into one
on one dialog. You should pick and choose from one platform to another
because it is not relevant between the two socials. Try not to use hash
marks in your Facebook account – it may be Greek to many of your
friends.

Final Words

Matt states, “The Internet is
a buying engine – not a selling engine. You have to be a part of the
buying process.” You can’t force the buying moment. Experiment with the
tools available to you and evaluate the outcome.

Leah – “When
you reach out you can tease out the most important people that are the
influencers. They can help you be a bridge to the community. Be genuine
and use it methodically.”

Greg – “The influencer in today’s
social world has a very wide footprint so you need to be very
authentic, transparent and methodical.” The long term strategy for
social messaging is making sure your messaging is exact. What’s the
right story to tell your audience; is it compelling and why?

Check out our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

Read this post with images enabled.

Having a good headline, a good article and even a good-looking site isn’t always enough to maintain an audience. To keep people coming back to your blog day after day you have to go through the extra effort to keep your visitors interested in your content.

Think of your blog as a TV show. How many shows start out strong but can’t maintain the interest as time passes? I remember years ago watching the show Alias. It quickly became one of my favorite shows that I looked forward to watching each week. Then somewhere around mid second season it jumped the shark. (The post-Superbowl episode when SD-6 was brought down and the sexual tension between the two main characters… oh, never mind. Yes, I’m still holding a grudge!) Alias just as quickly became one of the many shows that I threw away.

While you don’t need to have sexual tension in your blog content (or an evil mastermind, for that matter) to keep people interested, you do need to have an element of anticipation. Your readers should want to come back and read what you have to say next. But unlike a TV show, the anticipation of each “episode” of your blog needs to provide a release, leaving the reader completely fulfilled.

Grab Attention

You need to open your blog with something that draws the reader in. When writing with search engines in mind this can often be a bit tricky. Stories often make the most compelling openings but they often lack the keywords that your audience needs in order to accept the post as valuable. If the story is short, it will grab the reader’s attention and quickly lead them into the “lesson” of the content.

You don’t have to have keywords in the opening paragraph for the search engines, but it can be an important part of gaining and maintaining long-term rankings. If you can integrate the keywords into the opening story then you’ve got the best of both worlds.

Story isn’t the only way to create a compelling opening. Sometimes getting right to the meat works best. Telling the reader the conclusion before you even tell them how you got there can get them invested into leaning how you came to that conclusion.

I suggest you pick up a few books or read some other blogs posts that address this topic specifically. You can write a compelling opening any number of ways, you just need to find what works best for you, your audience, and for each particular blog post.

Appeal to Needs

Once you have the reader interested in whatever you have to say, you need to keep them moving through the content, consistently delivering information that keeps them intrigued. Unless your blog is for entertainment purposes, readers want to feel as if they have learned something. Heck, even entertainment blogs educate their readers in some way or another. But each reader comes to your site with a basic desire. It’s your job to meet that desire.

With business blogs there are three things you need to do. 1) Expose the need, 2) State the solution and 3) Provide the benefits.

Expose the need: What is it you want your readers to walk away knowing after having read your post? Make sure you expose the need in language they understand using concepts and illustrations that are familiar to them.

State the solution: Next, provide a solution to that need. The solution must be clearly stated and accurately explained. What must the reader to to achieve X results? What steps must they take? What products must they buy? What services must they engage in? These are all solution oriented questions that can be answered for your readers.

Provide the benefits: Finally, the benefits of each solution bust be clearly outlined. There is no sense in showing someone what they need, and how to get it if they are not fully aware of the benefits of doing so. The benefit is the final selling point that tells the reader that they truly do need what you are offering and that you have the right solution for them.

Ask Questions

Just as I did two paragraphs above, ask your readers questions. Questions get them thinking about answers and then allows you to insert your knowledge and expertise in providing an answer. An answer for an unasked question is often far less potent as an answer to a question that the reader is already contemplating… even if it’s a question you set them up with.

Not every question needs an answer. Some questions are designed to get the reader to move beyond what you can tell them and to think in terms of their own situation. Ultimately, if you can help your readers think for themselves this makes what you have to say even more valuable.

Inform

Finally, you want to make sure that each blog post serves its ultimate purpose and adequately informs your readers. They must walk away feeling as if their time reading your blog post was well spent. Failure to inform leaves your readers wanting. And unlike a TV show, and with the exception of the occasional multi-part series, leaving readers wanting does not bring them back for the next episode.

Keeping your readers interested in your content really boils down to creating good content that your readers find, well, interesting. If you keep your readers interested they’ll keep coming for more.

Other posts in the “Go Blog Yourself” series
* Introduction: Writing Your Blog Post with Pen in Hand and SEO in Mind
* Step 1: Know Who’s Looking
* Step 2: Know What They Want to See
* Step 3: Have a Good Pick-Up Line
* Step 4: Reveal the Goods
* Step 5: Be Easy On The Eyes
* Step 6: Keep Them Interested

Check out our small business news site.

by Manoj Jasra

Check out our small business news site.

by Mike Moran

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I post something on my Biznology blog each day, and we’ve got a lot of subscribers so we get a fair number of comments. And I check each and every comment before it is posted, so that I’m not littering the blog with spam comments. But I am finding myself challenged by deciding just what is and is not spam. If you run a blog, I wonder if this has ever happened to you, too.

For those of you that are unaware, search spammers love to target unsuspecting blogs with comments that link back to their sites to try to improve their search rankings. So blogging software has implemented the same kind of anti-spam techniques that e-mail programs have, with the same limited success.

Some blogs use captchas or challenge questions (mine goes that route) to reduce the success of automated spamming software. Some bloggers have implemented a “nofollow” attribute on their comment links to eliminate the benefit of links, but I think that’s unfair to the legitimate commenters who deserve the links, so I haven’t done that.

But even with what I’ve done, I still get lots of questionable comments for my approval. Let me show you a smattering of them. These are all real comments that I had to decide what to do with. I’m finding it harder and harder to know what to do with some of them.

What do you do if someone just types, “nice post”? I’ve decided that it is probably automated spam and I mark it so. So if a few of you liked one of our posts and I made you a spammer, I’m sorry. Next time, say something substantive.

I also mark it spam if someone enters a blatant product pitch with uncertain relevance to the post, such as “if you want to buy the runescape gold or runescape money I think we certainly can satisfy your request.Your choice is our service.” (I removed the links before displaying the comment here.)

But a low-key pitch that is on-topic I usually let go, such as this comment on a post about hosting blogs with a link to a Web development company: “Great article post…as of this time.. there are many hosting companies that can choose from. and if you wish to have it free…there are some of them offer a free hosting services.” Would you have had a different opinion if that same comment had a link to a hosting company? Or if it had a link inside the comment as well as from the name? Do you just edit out the links and post the comment?

What if the comment is nasty and clueless but somewhat on topic? Here is a comment I got on a post about PR people spamming journalists: “People on the internet do. Journalists in the vast majority are nothing more than worthless distractions to readers, and useful propagandists to whoever feeds them their information.” I decided to publish this one, but maybe it is just a clever ranting automated spammer.

If a comment is stupid, short, or dumb, that doesn’t make it spam, does it? Now I know that it might be a spammer doing those things, but I am concerned that I might be insulting someone by not publishing their response, and even more concerned that I am tarring them as a spammer unfairly by pressing that spam button.

Maybe I am being too black and white about this, because I tend to either mark comments as spam or publish them. Perhaps I should simply ignore some comments and not publish them, without marking them as spam. It’s a middle ground that will make my decision making even more complex, however—three choices instead of two—so I’ve shied away in the interest of time management.

I wondered if even writing this article is an invitation to spammers to send me short inane comments because I might publish them.

I’d like to hear from you. What do you bloggers do with these kinds of comment decisions? Am I being too lenient? Too strict? I don’t want to help spammers but I certainly don’t want to punish my loyal readers unfairly. Suggestions are very welcome.

Check out our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

It’s just a fact of life, good looking people get more attention. We walk through the checkout line in the grocery store and see half a dozen magazines filled with beautiful faces on top of beautiful bodies. A good looking woman walking through the mall is bound to turn a few heads. Commercials are filled with models that pass the schwing test. (Yes, I pulled out my 80’s innuendo reference manual for that!)

Our love of beauty isn’t just focused on the human body. We love well manicured lawns, beautiful sunsets, and gorgeous building architecture. Some of us even go to restaurants where the food is pretty. Face it, we are very visual people.

It strikes me as odd, that as much stock as we place in things that are wonderful to look at, we often don’t take as much care with our blogs. I understand that it’s not easy putting together a website that looks good. It takes effort, skill and often a good amount of money. So instead of doing what needs to be done we skimp. Blogs, on the other hand are far easier, it’s just a matter of finding a good theme and running with it. But for whatever reason, that often doesn’t happen.

Read more »

by Sage Lewis

PageRank Sculpting is now the hottest topic on the SEO landscape. Learn what it is and how the changes in this area will effect you.

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by Sage Lewis

Microsoft’s Key Phrase Research tool is now officially in beta. It’s a really powerful tool and offers a ton of great information. I highly recommend you check it out!

Check out our small business news site.

by Eric Brown

This storyline isn’t new. Jennifer has blogged about what her kids
taught her about SEO, what her kids taught her about blogging, and what her kids taught her about Social Media. A friend in the apartment business just blogged
about Bass Fishing and Leasing Apartments.  As you can tell Gus is a
dog, a mostly wonderful Bull Terrier. Gus is a year and a half old and
is my first dog of my own. Gus goes to the office regularly, and has
learned to regularly tweet on his own twitter account @Gus_Urbane. He
has created quite a stir from time to time.

ENGAGE AND EMOTION
We have all heard about the Four P’s of Marketing, but what about the two E’s, Emotion and Engagement, are you fully utilizing them? Gus,
like most pets really knows how to evoke our emotions.  In our small
business, a boutique property management business, we decided to go
after the pet market, and accept pets. Lots of places accept pets, but
with weight and breed restrictions, and a hefty pet deposit. We decided
to keep it simple; We Love Pets at Urbane, no fees and no breed
restrictions.  The theory was this, If we have a good resident, they
likely have a good pet. If we have a bad resident, they likely have a
bad pet. We worked really hard on an enhanced resident screening system
and attracting great residents, which has also improved collections. A
nice side benefit to accepting pets!

But the success of this program isn’t about accepting pets, It is about
“Urbane Loves Pets” which has successfully evoked prospects and
residents emotion. Consequently, we own the local pet market. If you
are going after sliver markets, go with vengeance and own them.

MAKE IT A PLAYFUL EXPERIENCE
Gus is a pretty happy guy, tail always wagging. He just wants to play,
play and play. He is  Fun Boy. With that, we have lightened up the
entire leasing process. Apartment hunting is not a walk in the park. We
have a Centralized Leasing Center, known as Urbane Underground that is
anything but typical. There are farm watering troughs with tropical
plants in them. A forty-five foot long bamboo planter. Crazy music
playing. A Tropical bird hanging out. A conference table that hangs
from the ceiling with no legs. Anything but typical. Point is, it is
very whimsical and fun. Lighten up your approach, have some fun along the way.  Life is Short. 

EVERYONE LOVES TREATS
Anyone who has pets know they love treats. Gus is no different, he
lives for treats. We have developed a pretty interesting program and
have created Urbane VIP cards. They resemble a credit card and enable
the holder to cash in on several discounts locally. During the tour, we go
through the program, explain the benefits and send them off with an
Urbane VIP Card. I am pretty sure our competitors aren’t forking over
any treats. It is a great way to differentiate, and is funded by the
local commerce.  

MAKE ME LAUGH
Gus loves to make me laugh, and he does a great job of that. Our
marketing at Urbane is anything but typical or traditional.  We set up
movies that reverse play against a backdrop that show silhouettes of
girls dancing together, guys dancing together and a variety of other
wacky stuff. We can set up the movie in minutes, and it comes on at
dark and shuts off at 2;00 AM.

Cars and people literally stop in the
street and stare. They laugh, and make lots of comments about Urbane,
including some who think that two guys dancing together is too
provocative. We like that. Is your marketing material causing your
prospects to talk about you, or does it end up in the trash because it
is outdated old and stale? BTW, the movie we made cost us nothing to
make, the projector is reused over and over.

LETS CONNECT
Perhaps the most significant thing I have learned from Gus is that he
loves to connect with people, and so do your customers. 
Our blog, The Urbane Life  has caused lots of folks to connect with
hip and cool local business, blathering and goings on and just a
general give back to the community. But how can you do those kind of
things one may ask, what is the pay back. Try this on, page one Google,
number one ranking for Apartments Royal Oak, one of the most used
search’s. Where does your Small Business fare with a Google Ranking. Even
more, what kind of web traffic does your community drive? We will have
over 14,0000 visitors this month. We only have 360 units. I think the
blog is a great payoff don’t you?

You too can try these things. They aren’t hard, and they are not
expensive.  We would love to hear your thoughts.

Check out our small business news site.

by Karri Flatla

Convincing small business folk to get on board with social media is akin to asking a four-year-old to watch paint dry. It’s nice to look at, for a few minutes, until boredom sets in and the child asks if he can go outside and play. Outside is where the action is. There’s stuff to do. People to see. Places to go.

And, like watching paint dry, we watch what’s happening on the public time line and conclude that not a lot is going on. Well, unless you’re a marketer in which case you’re immediately drawn to the incestuous sharing of cutting edge information … er … well …

Never mind.

It’s fun to be a skeptic though because it makes you sound really smart, like you know something no one else does–something everyone else is just too dumb to comprehend. For example, when TechCrunch told us that that 80% of the “people” on twitter are essentially
squatters, the neo-web pundits gave a collectively cynical “duh!” And the commenters over at Shoemoney Blog seem to think this is indicative of how useless twitter really is. That hey,
they were right all along. It’s like one big I-told-you-so love-in over there.

Yet if you read the entire TechCrunch article, you’re reminded that twitter is no different than any other web media. For example, about 10% of any forum membership actually participates in the discussion, and that’s on a good day. Or, how many of you grabbed a MySpace ID but never used it? Maybe it was intentional (to protect a company brand) or maybe it wasn’t (I hate MySpace).

The TechCrunch writer closes the article by saying that:   

“Twitter is no different than any other form of social media. A small fraction of users produce the overwhelming amount of content, even if it is just 140 characters at a time. Everyone else just drinks from the stream.”

It’s the old 80-20 rule. And it’s not really news. The biggest returns result from a relatively small amount of input or, in this case, a small handful of users. Moreover, no one ever said you had to participate (generate content) to get something out of social media. In fact, cruising around a forum without saying a darned thing can be quite informative. Some even call it research.

I feel like a broken record repeating this, but it’s not sinking in: you get what you give. And if you don’t want to give, that’s okay. Just don’t complain about what others are doing or not doing. Be quiet and enjoy the show.

So, how are you using twitter? And if you’re not using it, what are you complaining about?

Check out our small business news site.