I just wanted to wish you a happy Summer, albeit the tail end -- so close to a return the the grindstone. While I have surely been enjoying the Summer, taking as many rides and tours on my old touring bike as I could, I rejoice that Autumn is approaching. I'm a Very Big Man and the heat and humidity of Washington, DC, oppresses me.
Read MoreThank you Skinny Coconut Oil Influencers
Every couple weeks, we update our kudos list for all the online influencers and bloggers who have helped Gerris' client Skinny & Co. coconut oil get the word out of their best-on-the-planet -earth coconut oil products.
Read MoreIt’s normal to be bad before you’re good
I attended Ira Glass‘ talk at Wolf Trap last Saturday and my take-away is: it’s normal to be bad before you’re good. According to Ira Glass, this is really what every successful person knows but never shares with beginners: never allow the threat of being bad prevent you from spending years being bad
Read MoreInfluencer marketing is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration
Last night I had the honor of dusting off my trusty old long tail earned media blogger outreach deck and updating it for the new world of earned media influencer marketing for the lovely Brigitte Winter and her Georgetown School of Continuing Studies students.
Up until now, the Elements of Communications Planning students have learned the Georgetown method but now this George Washington University grad added a short hour of Influencer Marketing right on the heels of an hour of Geoff Livingston Content Marketing magic (how in the world do you follow Geoff?).
So, today your speaker is Chris Abraham:
My Personal Digital PR Philosophy
- Find people where they live (and meet them there even if it’s a forum or message board)
- Explore the long tail (there are millions of people blogging, sharing, and posting online – and PR tends to pile on the same 100 “influentials”) “We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal” (#83 of the 95 Theses from The Cluetrain Manifesto)
- Spoil everyone (like you would Guy Kawasaki)
- Be grateful (nobody is required to help you)
Why You Should Reach Past the A-List
- Blogger outreach tends to focus on only identifying and engaging top-25 influential bloggers
- Out of those 25, maybe 3 will cover your story over the course of a campaign
- We collect every blogger who has ever had a thematic interest in our customers
- We collect them all – all of them – into a “universe” – a list
- We reach out to each and every one of them – no fewer than 2,000 but often 5,000 – via email
- But then that’s where the work starts
Why You Should Reach Past the A-List
- The initial blast is akin to speed-dating
- Most good pitches don’t require a personal relationship
Success depends on five things:
- Freshness & quality of the list collected
- Generosity of the “gift” being offered in the pitch
- The ability of the email to reach the inbox
- The charm & responsiveness of the responders
- Following up twice after the initial email outreach
On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog
Campaign Questions
- Goal: what is it you need to do?
- Monitor: what are you looking to find?
- Discover: where are people talking?
- Learn: who are these talking people?
- Collect: what groups do you need?
- Engage: how best to connect?
- Outreach: how best to pitch?
- Analyze: how did you do?
Goals: What Do You Want to Accomplish?
- Build brand awareness?
- Increase community engagement?
- Prospect new brand ambassadors?
- Drive sales, traffic, membership?
- Drive conversation volume?
- Improve organic search?
- Get a feel for yourneighborhood?
- Launch a new product, service, investment?
Monitor: Listen/Look Before You Leap
Google Search is the best tool to get a feel
- When it comes down to it, Google does an amazing job of giving you a 30,000-foot view of the blogosphere
Spend some time understanding the space
- It’s not always obvious how people engage with you, your brand, your space, or your industry.
- Allow your community to lead your exploration; do not be willful: people don’t always use your language
- Include message boards, forums, etc., in your recon
Try out all the tools: it’s a buyer’s market
- SDL SM2, Radian6, Sysomos, Sprout Social, Lithium
Discover: Finding People Where They Live
Social media is much bigger than Facebook
- There are a multitude of social networks, self-run message boards, threads deep in reddit, and ad-hoc discussions everywhere online (Dailymile.com, etc.)
If it exists, there is a blog about it (Rule 34 variant–if it exists, there is porn of it!)
- There are more than a billion active blogs worldwide
Always start with Google
Influencer discovery
- Traackr – traackr.com
- GroupHigh – grouphigh.com
- Little Bird – getlittlebird.com
- InkyBee – inkybee.com
Discover: Finding People Where They Live
Learn: Do They Want to Be Engaged? And How?
Blogs (including online journalists, curators, aggregators, group blogs, and bloggers)
- Can you find their name and email address?
- If contacting them is hard, maybe they don’t want to be
- Look for a “how to engage/pitch” message
- Follow their directions to a T (or don’t engage them at all)
Forums (including bookmark & link aggregators)
- Engage forum owners directly, don’t jump in there!
Social Networks (including FB, Twitter, etc.)
- Engage before befriending before pitching
Collect: Demo-, Geo-, Psycho-Graphic Lists
The A-list (the crème de la crème of influence)
- Generally professional bloggers and journalists, including the blogs and profiles of mainstream media platforms, celebrities, high Klout scores, high-traffic blogs, authors, actors, scientists, pundits, newsmakers, and people with mad followers
- Will blog for free, but only if they’re compelled to (exclusive content, big news, financial releases, new investment, etc.)
- Never, ever, include A-list bloggers in a bulk email pitch – hand-written only
Prepare your kid-gloves and your checkbook – find ways to woo them personally (over lavish meals, inviting them to HQ, or meeting them down at one of the many conferences they attend) - Become a persistent “bestie” – either as someone who is a communicator pitching them good, consistent, and valuable content or, even better, a personal friend who doesn’t just collect them as a method of access or a sign of prestige
B-D-List (the mid-section of the long tail often asks for money)
- While not all B-D-list bloggers lead with an advertising rate sheet, many do
- Most PR campaigns aren’t budgeted for advertising spend so I don’t pay for posts
- Ideally, earned-media is the goal of PR campaigns, so it’s up to you
- Many of the B-D-list bloggers can get you what you need for less than a strong ad buy
- While disclosures are essential everywhere, they’re doubly so for “advertorial” content
- I tend to put any blogger who asks for money into a DNC* list
- Midrange bloggers are easier to access, harder to garner earn media mentions from, but a worthy
- investment of time and attention toward a long-term relationship
- People help out their friends, so becoming close may curry favor for earned media pitches
- I generally include B-D-list bloggers in general long-tail bulk email outreach
E-Z-List (the long-tail of the blogosphere, including ~1 Billion bloggers)
- While a billion active blogs are well out-of-scope, please remember:
- No matter how obscure your product or service, there’s probably a blog about it
- The original Rule #34 is: “If it exists, there is porn of it;” same for the blogosphere
- Collect email addresses, blog name, and maybe location only for E-Z-list
- While I might be willing to chase down the contact info of A-D-list bloggers via forms or hunting them down via LinkedIn or Facebook Messenger, Dailymile mail, or Twitter DMs, I only engage long-tail bloggers if they share their email address gladly
- If bloggers don’t make it easy to contact them, they may not want to be contacted; and, if you contact someone who doesn’t want to be, there will be serious blowback
- Send everyone in your list a bulk email pitch but be ready to engage in person
- Don’t worry, most people aren’t fanboys – a cold-pitch is fine if your “gift” is generous
Engage: Pitch It Slow and Right Over the Plate
Tell, don’t sell
- Lead with the news, not the used car
Pitching is speed dating
- You don’t need to overwrite
- Allow people to be intrigued
Less is more
- Attention span is limited
- Pre-masticate message into easy-to-understand pabulum
- Don’t include attachments or inline content
Don’t BS, brown nose, lie, or flatter
- “Please don’t say you read and love my blog, then pitch me on something that I never cover here” — Mack Collier
Outreach: The Catch Is the More Important Part
The informational microsite
- Internally, I call it an SMNR
- Social Media News Release
The kitchen sink theory
- Don’t limit the SMNR to just the pitch
- Bloggers are libertarian contrarians
- Give a lot to look through – give them options
Steal me, steal me!
- Optimize content to be copied-and-pasted
- Pre-embed embed codes
- Pre-link and optimize for SEO, etc.
Outreach: The Magic Happens in the Inbox
Outreach: Yet Another Mail Merge
Analyze: It All Comes Down to the Bottom Line
Track using site analytics tools
- Google Analytics tracking code in the SMNR
- Server-side analytics tools: AWstats, Webalizer
- Track both SMNR & target site
Track using media mention tools
- I presently use SDL SM2 (Alterian SM2)
- Primary, secondary, tertiary, etc., mentions
- Lots of free and fee-based tools
- Google Analytics is becoming more SM-savvy
Track using specialized landing pages
- Using affiliate tricks-of-the-trade
Analyze: The Proof Is in the Pudding
Current Client: Skinny & Co. Coconut Oil
- Currently, Gerris Corp is working on an earned media campaign for Skinny & Co. coconut oil.
- SMNR: skinnyconews.com
- Client is the perfect client for earned media:
- Product is timely and sexy
- Client is generous with all influencers
- No influencer floor
- Beautiful packaging and top-quality product
- In two months, 302 blogger product requests:185 first month, 117 month two
125 earned media posts month 1, 82 month two
Current Client: Skinny & Co. Coconut Oil
- As a thank you to all the Skinny & Co. bloggers and influencers, we always try to give them all somelink love via Gerris and my personal blog.
- We encourage Skinny & Co. to thank, engage, comment, like, share, reshare and retweet any and all earned media content they discover and we share.
- While I am far from perfect, I try to do anything I can outside of the product to show personal appreciation.
Blog2Social removes social sharing pain
You know all the hell I go through every time I publish a blog post? The hell I will go through after I hit submit on this post? The process I go into in great depth on If you post it will they come (to read your blog)? Well, I have it all automated now, at least over on my RNNR.us blog (and this is a very low-traffic vanity blog that's brand new, is not monetized, and I am no fitness star, so when you look at the traffic spikes, keep everything in perspective).
With Blog2Social you can automatically share your blog posts customized for each network, automated and scheduled at the right time on social media profiles, pages and groups.
First impression? Well, the proof is in the pudding. After installing Blog2Social onto RNNR.us, I started resharing every single evergreen post I have ever posted through the plugin. Not just all at once but I also have at least ten queued up for the rest of August. As you'll see below, reactivating old, previously-shared, content through my networks immediately resulted in traffic--both volume and also unique visitors:
If I never did that, I would have been leaving all of that traffic and all those visitors on the table. And this is the day after I installed the plugin app, not down the road via SEO but the day after via social. Amazing!
Stefan Müller of Adenion GmbH reached out to me about his new Wordpress plugin called Blog2Social and it seems to mostly solve four of my most pressing problems: Blog2Social automates the social sharing I do immediately after posting, Blog2Social also makes it easy to repurpose and reshare old blog posts that are still relevant and unworthy of becoming archived, Blog2Social allows me to schedule as many shares and reshares as far into the future as I like so I can keep a constant drip of content markeing-driven social shares going every day, and Blog2Social shares to a much wider selection of social platforms than do HootSuite, Sprout Social, and Buffer.
I am running a generous four-full-week, full-featured, trial of their Premium product. I have 23-days left to noodle around, plenty of room to explore and get a full-featured experience.
All I needed to do to make it all work is go to the Add New section of my Plugins section then type blog2social into the Search Plugins text box in the upper right. Or, you can download it directly from the Blog2Social Wordpress.org page and then install it using your Upload Plugin button on your Add Plugins page (if this is all Greek to you, you're not geeky enough to do any of this, task it to someone else or you'll become frustrated with the entire install process).
OK, so if you're a geek or tech savvy at all, once you're done, the process should be simple for you. Aside from bumping into a couple German-language or mistranslated dialogue boxes during the process of linking up Blog2Social to your social and sharing platforms, it all went smoothly -- except I am still having a problem with Google+ and Medium.com, both of which I am currently OK with until I have some time to do a deeper debug.
And if "p.a." means per-annum, then the prices are cheap for the plugin: most of us will only need the Smart Premium product, $49/year, offering everything, like Buffer, but with fewer users and profiles. Then there's the Pro and Business versions of the Premium product, $99/year & $199/year. They do offer a free version but it sucks. You lose access to too many social platforms to make the free version worth it for me as I'd lose Google+, Facebook Pages, to LinkedIn -- anything that's business-related.
That said, if you're just a singleton blogger and only want to share to all your profiles or have only one account-per-platform, the free version might be perfect for you. And, if you grow, you can always upgrade. What's more, as I have said before, I encourage you to take advantage of their full-featured month-long trial -- it'll just sit there waiting until you post your first post. It won't time out on you while you're trying to find the time, after reading this article, to install and hook up all your accounts.
What I like the most about this app is that the processing part of the app happens over on the Blog2Social servers. It doesn't bog down my own site and you don't need to rely on Crontab to schedule your posts.
You'll see all the posts I queued up yesterday that will be drip-dropped across social over the next couple of weeks.
Also, two more things: you need to post the article first, before you share. And Blog2Social reminds you about that on the writer's dashboard, if you have admin access to the tool.
Also, there's a useful step between when you click share and Blog2Social shares and this is good. It's an intermediate page that allows me to edit every post to every platform.
It allows me to customize all my tweets, add or remove @mentions and #hashtags, and sort out what I'm going to say and how I'm going to say it on Facebook and Google+, be it to my profiles or your Pages.
It's really beautifully thought through and integrated.
My next step is to convince Mike Moran and Eileen Cosenza that they should give Blog2Social a try on the Biznology blog and then pony up the $49-$199/year to free up some serious time for all of us, especially Madeline Moran's.
Let me know what you think, especially after you've had a chance to try out Blog2Social.
I really wish that Blog2Social were already installed on Biznology right now because after I hit Publish I have at least another 1/2 hour of promotional work to do before I can move onto my next task for the day.
Via Biznology
Skinny & Co. influencer reviews round two
Here's the second round of reviews and shares that our influencers have done for our client Skinny and Company, maker of Skinny & Co. coconut oil products.
Thank you so much to all of the bloggers and online influencers who have done reviews, unboxings, video reviews, SnapChats, Instagram reviews, blog reviews, and even Twitter reviews on our behalf! We're gobsmacked and appreciative of every one of them, every one of you!
Here are some live shares as we get them! This is round two:
- 4 Lettre Words
- A Case of the Runs
- A Day in the Life of a Surferwife
- A Squared
- A Squared
- A Squared
- A Very Sweet Blog
- A Very Sweet Blog
- A Very Sweet Blog
- A Very Sweet Blog
- A Very Sweet Blog
- A Very Sweet Blog
- Absofcakes
- AMT Editorial Staff
- Andrea B
- Ann Louise First Lady of Nutrition
- AnnLouise.com
- Arianne Cruz
- Arianne Cruz
- Arianne Cruz
- Arianne Cruz
- Arianne Cruz
- Arianne Cruz
- Arianne Cruz
- Athletic Minded Traveler
- Ayre
- Ayre
- Ayre
- AYRE
- Babblings of a Mommy
- Barefoot Gentile
- Being a Dandelion
- Believing in myself
- Ben Greenfield Fitness
- Ben Greenfield Fitness
- Candid Belle
- Candid Belle
- Chicago Running Bloggers
- Chris Abraham
- Cuppajyo
- Daydreaming Beauty
- Daydreaming Beauty
- Delicious Knowledge
- Eat Lose Gain
- Eat Lose Gain
- Eternal Amour
- Eternal Amour
- Fitness Factory
- Fun & Fitness
- Fun & Fitness
- Fun & Fitness
- Having Fun Saving
- Having Fun Saving
- Hermetica Health
- Hermetica Health
- Ho Ho Runs
- In Sonnet's Kitchen
- Invictus
- Invictus
- Invictus
- Invictus
- Journey In Running
- Journey In Running
- Katrine Van Wyk
- Kim Alston
- Kim Alston
- Learning to Eat Allergy-Free
- Learning to Eat Allergy-Free
- Learning to Eat Allergy-Free
- Learning to Eat Allergy-Free
- Lengthening Locks
- Lift Write Love
- Liv Life
- Maggie Wolff
- Marcia's Healthy Slice
- Marcia's Healthy Slice
- Mommy's Nest
- Mom's Sunday Cafe
- My Journey to Fit
- Parenting Patch
- Prime Beauty
- Prime Beauty
- Prime Beauty
- Prime Beauty Blog
- Real Gluten Free Meals
- Real Gluten Free Meals
- Real Gluten Free Meals
- Real Gluten Free Meals
- Run and Live Happy
- Run and Live Happy
- Run Run Live
- Runner Blog
- Runner Maybe
- Runner Maybe
- Runner Maybe
- Running Escapades
- Running Escapades
- Running Escapades
- Running Escapades
- Skinny Hollie
- Skinny Hollie
- So What? I run.
- Sonnet's Review
- Sue Kauffman Fitness
- Sue Kauffman Fitness
- Sue Kauffman Fitness
- The Complete Herbal Guide
- The Complete Herbal Guide
- The Complete Herbal Guide
- The Complete Herbal Guide
- The Gourmez
- The Gourmez
- The New Alex
- The New Alex
- Too Tall Fritz
- Too Tall Fritz
- TooTallFritz
- Trihardist
- Trihardist
- Trihardist
- Tutus And Tennies
- Tutus And Tennies
- Tutus And Tennies
- Tutus And Tennies
- Tutus and Ternnies
- Where I Need To Be
- You, Your Body & Your Health
Skinny Coconut Oil is a small batch, extra virgin, cold pressed coconut oil, made with nothing but 100% pure, raw, pesticide free, wild coconuts from the pristine jungles of Vietnam -- and our bloggers and influencers are loving it!
Please check out the first wave if you like, Thank you Skinny & Co. influencers first wave.
Thank you First Wave Skinny & Co. Influencers
Here's a list of links to the bloggers and online influencers who have blogged and shared about Skinny Coconut Oil on their blogs and social media profiles -- and this is only the first wave! They keep on coming!
We would like to personally thank the first wave of online influencers who have done such a beautiful job sharing their personal experiences with Skinny & Co. coconut oil and all their other health and beauty products. This is why we do what I do!
- AMT Editorial Staff
- So What? I run.
- Ayre
- Ayre
- Ayre
- Maggie Wolff
- Fitness Factory
- Parenting Patch
- Trihardist
- Trihardist
- Maggie Wolff
- Eat Lose Gain
- Trihardist
- Chris Abraham
- Delicious Knowledge
- Running Escapades
- Running Escapades
- Running Escapades
- Ho Ho Runs
- Barefoot Gentile
- A Very Sweet Blog
- A Very Sweet Blog
- A Very Sweet Blog
- A Very Sweet Blog
- A Very Sweet Blog
- A Very Sweet Blog
- Prime Beauty Blog
- Skinny Hollie
- Skinny Hollie
- Journey In Running
- Journey In Running
- My Journey to Fit
- Tutus And Tennies
- Tutus And Tennies
- Tutus And Tennies
- Tutus And Tennies
- Sue Kauffman Fitness
- Sue Kauffman Fitness
- Where I Need To Be
- Running Escapades
- A Case of the Runs
- You, Your Body & Your Health
- Candid Belle
- Candid Belle
- Real Gluten Free Meals
- Real Gluten Free Meals
- Real Gluten Free Meals
- Real Gluten Free Meals
- Mom's Sunday Cafe
- Eternal Amour
- Eternal Amour
- Candid Belle
- Candid Belle
- Babblings of a Mommy
- Mommy's Nest
- A Day in the Life of a Surferwife
- 4 Lettre Words
Janet Thaeler & Maryanne Conlin on Influencer Marketing
Yesterday I had a lovely chat with two fellow influencer marketers, Maryanne Conlin and Janet Thaeler. Both conversations were quite different but both really reassured me that my practice at Gerr.is and the articles that I am writing for you here are on target.
Influencers Are Shifting from Blogs to Social Media
Maryanne asked me, during our call, whether I have experienced Social Media Flight -- the rush from blogs to social platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Medium, Tumblr, and even Vine and Periscope in lieu of their first homes, blogs. Indeed!
While I still reach out to my influencers through their blogs, all the analytics I have done lately have proven that the majority of bloggers out there are not influencers because they blog, they're influencers because they have tens of thousands if not millions of friends, fans, pins, and like across all their other social media channels -- they only use their blogs as media hubs, where they can collect all their videos, projects, contact info, and successes into one convenient and well-branded place, almost like new media news clippings, like a resume of bona fides.
While the traffic to their blogs may be only 500-2,000 visitors-a-month, their true fame burns bright on YouTube or Facebook. Ethan Newberry personifies this in his alter ego, the Ginger Runner. He had a central website, of course, but it's only a hub for his massively successful YouTube channel, his Twitter following, his Facebook posse, and his fans on Insta! I am not just a pandering shill, I am a fan -- ask him yourself!
Just Say No to Prospects with Crappy Products
After just a call, I'm professionally in love with Janet Thaeler. We spent almost an hour comparing notes on much heart we put into campaigns that would never work because they couldn't. While we worked even harder on these clients than we even did on home-runs like Mizuno Running, Kimberly-Clark Healthcare, and Skinny and Company, we couldn't make anything happen.
We tortured ourselves and we walked away from money and we even went to court over clients we took with products and services that just wouldn't fly via earned media influencer marketing. They were Spruce Geese! And we beat ourselves up until we realized that the client/vendor relationship is a two-way street: while clients get to choose whether they engage us, we also get to decide if their product, announcement, news, etc, are exciting, trendy, appealing, generous, or timely enough to take the blogosphere and social media sphere by storm.
Well, that's on us.
If we take the gig knowing that the campaign might come up empty, even if we state that very clearly in the contract, it doesn't matter, the client will freak out. So, it's up to us to either say no, clearly; or, to come back and suggest that while that campaign will not work with earned media, you can pay to play so if you have the discretionary budget to pay to have people review your iOS App or your commencement speech -- no matter what you have to get out there into the social mediasphere, you can do it with a compelling enough check -- even you SEO bottom-feeders!
It was so nice to speak to Janet because until now I thought it was me but it wasn't, it was them not me, but it was me because I shouldn't have tried in the first place; or, I should have given better counsel.
People Buy You Not the Widget
PR pitching is just like selling: people are investing in the narrative, the story, the personality, the charm, the attention. It's a seduction, it's a love affair. Even when winning friends and clients, the rules of love still apply, to paraphrase Tommy Dewey playing Alex Cole on the dark and stormy Hulu series Casual. And, once you've won them over, remember, whether a client, a friend, or an online influencer, you should always treat them like your BFF.
And while How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is arguably the most successful book ever printed on the art of connecting, some people are skeptical as to how authentic his strategems are; however, that's not the point. When I went to high school dances I used to carry a little rubber Gumby doll in my shirt's chest pocket.
I was a shy boy and used the little rubber bendy green doll to get girls to start conversations with me. If you don't develop the right angle of attack, if you can't fine a compelling, charming, attractive, or even amusing way through the front door, you'll never have the opportunity to prove that you are, in fact, a beautiful child of God, too, and not just a spammy shilling sleazeball.
Become a Influencer to Reach Fellow Influencers
So, before I was an influencer marketer, I was an influencer. Even now, I sort of am. I have a Klout of 79, I have 50.4k followers on Twitter, 5,000 friends on Facebook, 7,000 connections on LinkedIn, 3,500 subscribers on YouTube, 2,000 followers on Pinterest, 1,000 followers on Vine, 7,600 followers on Medium.com, and over 7,500 on Instagram.
I used to have a following on ChrisAbraham.com and on MarketingConversation.com but now all my blogging's on this blog, Biznology, and on Socialmedia.biz. That said, Janet, Maryanne, and I agree: the sky is much bluer if you're currently or have ever been an influencer yourself.
For two reasons: 1) you can relate to how shitty being blogger can be, especially based on how crappy a lot of pitchers, brands, and marketers are on a day-to-day basis, especially in your INBOX. 2) you can always lead that you're a fellow blogger and include all of your mad social media and blog bonafides in your pitch.
And, if you're like me and pitch long-tail, from the A-list all the way down to the Z, you'll often find yourself of a quite higher caste then they are, which can impress them and aid to the appeal of working with you: you might very well be able to mentor them yourself, mention them across your network, etc.
Becoming an influencer ourselves is the best thing that we all have ever done.
Part Two in Two Weeks
I have run our of words but will continue in two weeks on these topics:
- Influencers Equate Getting Paid with Having Influence
- More Influencers are Becoming Partners, Affiliates and Profit-Sharing
- Top YouTubers are Proper Celebrities
- Influencers Respond to Recognition and Respect
- Marketers Will Get What They Put Out There
- It's Worth Getting to Know Folks
Exciting, right? I was going to write to all of these points today but I looked at the time and how many words I wrote and hit the brakes. Next week I will be reviewing Blog2Social, an amazing Wordpress plugin you should check out. What it does is simple but so essential for content marketers like me who tend to end up being a one-man band:
Blog2Social publishes blog articles directly from the dashboard or the editor surface of an article to multiple social media networks. The postings can be customized individually for each network. A preview pane allows users to optimize their postings for various networks with individual comments, #hashtags, tags, keywords or @handles – in one single step.
Blog2Social connects to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Xing, Tumblr, Storify, Pinterest, Flickr and Diigo. Blog2Social also posts to Facebook pages, Google+ pages and communities, LinkedIn pages and groups.
Blog2Social allows users to select images from the article gallery for the posting. Published social media postings can be tracked per link. Blog2Social also allows users to schedule their postings for any time and will send them out individually and automatically.
Blog2Social makes social media management for blog posts easier and more effective. Blog2Social makes the submission process quick and easy and at the same time allows users to customize and optimize posts for each network.
Pretty sweet! Stay tuned! I have installed it on my rnnr.us blog and will give you a full report next Tuesday!
Via Biznology
The quantum mechanics of blogger outreach
Pitching all available bloggers simultaneously allows one to quickly — immediately — discern which bloggers are interesting in carrying the story and which aren’t, allowing my team to decommission all unsuccessful instances, releasing valuable resources, in favor of all instances that result in bona fide social media mentions.
My long tail blogger outreach strategy is periodically challenged or criticized as being too aggressive. The argument generally goes as follows: if you send thousands of email pitches to topically- and demographically-relevant bloggers and online influencers in one go, you’re spamming. The real way to do it right is to reach out blogger by blogger, with each pitch being lovingly and relevantly written in series over time after investing months of time, previous to actually initiating a pitch, becoming best friends. In my opinion, it is virtually impossible to resource enough time, talent and treasure to engage meaningfully with enough people, enough influencers, enough bloggers, to result in the sort of impact required to move the needle with any level of immediacy or timeliness.
In order to activate every single potentially viable blog and blogger, it is essential to create efficiencies of engagement, especially when your goal is to pitch further down the long tail of influentials than is practically possible by hand.
So, what my version of long-tail blogger outreach does is identifies as many bloggers as possible who are accessible by email and who have a blog germane to the campaign at hand and sends them a quick pitch all at once in order to quickly discover who is truly interested posting about my client or learning more about what the campaign is about. All at once. 100% discovery, discernment, inquiry, engagement, and response, all within days of the launch of the campaign. With the ultimate goal of as many quality, thoughtful, and topical earned media mentions as possible.
It reminds me of the promise quantum computing has for the world of encryption and code-breaking. The best example I can think of that illustrates this is the code-breaking efficiencies of the quantum computer compared to the a brute-force attack from a conventional computer.
While even the most advanced computing systems still take millions of years to crack military grade public-key encryption, the promise of the quantum computer is that it will crack even the most inscrutable private diplomatic cable instantaneously no matter the rock hardness of military-grade encryption used.
Why? Because while a conventional computer must iterate through every possible variation in series until ithits upon the correct permutation, a quantum computer uses a theoretical concept called superposition to spawn every permutation of the private key simultaneously. The funny thing about quantum states is that all iterations, no matter how many required to break the sort of key modern spies use, are not separate or different, they’re all manifestations of one over millions of instances. When the correct password is discovered, all the failed instances fall away and only the successful instance remains.
So, let me break this down to a popular illustration: a Las Vegas hotel with thousands of rooms. One missing engagement ring. Traditional computers needs to check each room individually. A quantum search isn’t just hiring a thousand gamblers to each look in a room individually instantaneously, it’s much cooler than that. In this instance, this quantum bridegroom would create a thousand instances of himself, all him and not copies or clones, in a thousand rooms all at once, Cool, right? When our quantum bridegroom discovers the ring, in one of the thousand rooms, all other concurrent manifestations of him go poof and he stands in room number 0163, holding the ring.
In my experience, one of the reasons why folks are loathe to engage in blogger outreach is because it is a little like going door-to-door looking for the ring. Or, more aptly, going from door-to-door selling Bibles, vacuums, or Girl Scout cookies. No matter how many salesmen (or Girl Scouts) you have knocking on doors, it’s nothing compared to creating a Girl Scout in quantum superposition, allowing her to sell Thin Mints to all possible houses in the entire neighborhood simultaneously by being in all possible states simultaneously, selling cookies to all the houses that want cookies while not selling cookies to all the carb-free households.
So, pitching all available bloggers simultaneously allows one to quickly — immediately — discern which bloggers are interesting in carrying the story and which aren’t, allowing my team to decommission all unsuccessful instances, releasing valuable resources, in favor of all instances that result in bona fide social media mentions.
This is not to say this sort of quantum blogger outreach is easy. While there are many efficiencies in this method, the huge number of bloggers one is able to simultaneously engage means that instead of reaching out to a couple-few A-list bloggers-a-day over the course of the year, you are likely to get thousands of responses from bloggers with hundreds of earned social media mentions, none of which can benefit from my mad quantum methods of engagement. Once the connection is made and the relationship is initiated, every next step of the way is completely conventional, completely in-series, person by person, blogger by blogger, conversion by conversion.
Reaching out en masse to thousands of bloggers simultaneously isn’t appropriate for all campaigns or all engagements — bespoke A-list outreach still has a real place in social media and blogger relations — but it can be an essential competitive advantage when launching a book or opening a new movie; activating advocates and allies on a political issue, or to push out information about an event or time-sensitive news. In these scenarios, one cannot invest months and months culling through a media list, failure-by-failure, hoping for success. One needs to quickly separate the chaff from the wheat and then lavish all the resources that would have been spent on all those failures on all that wheat, all those successes.
Learn more about Chris Abraham at Gerris digital.
Via Biznology
How to prune your Twitter following
Clients, colleagues and my friends all want to increase their follower count. In a world where @Lady Gaga has 25 million souls following her @ladygaga Twitter profile, we’re all in it for the numbers. Not everyone wants lots and lots, some want the right followers. To them, that usually means being discerning when it comes to following someone back. What I do is absolutely follow everyone back to follows me at @chrisabraham.
There’s another option that not many people actually do on a regular basis: pruning the dead leaves and branches away from the little bonsai or the mighty oak you call your Twitter profile.
UnTweeps: Unfollow unloyal followers
I started with UnTweeps, a tool that allowed me to unfollow any and all followers who have not tweeted in X-number of days. I started with 30 days and worked up from there. There’s a free version as well as a very inexpensive subscription or single-pay model you can conveniently pay for using PayPal (3-day non-recurring subscription for $1.37, 1 month non-recurring subscription for $6.49, monthly recurring subscription for only $5 and a 1 year non-recurring subscription for $35).
ManageFlitter: Strategic filtering
Next, I explored ManageFlitter, a tool that also allows you to strategically follow, unfollow and white-list folks depending on their not following you back, not having a profile image (just a default egg), having a non-English-speaking profile, being inactive for more than 30 days, being overly talkative, overly quiet or having a “bad ratio,” which is to say, when an account follows way more people than follows it back. I really like ManageFlitter for its versatility. It offers most of its functions for free but I recommend contributing some to their project, and there are quite a few added functions if you become a pro member — $12/month for one user and $24/month for two to five users. What’s really cool with MF is that they offer a thing they call “Google+ To Twitter,” which allows all Google Plus posts to cross-post to Twitter — with a host of amazing settings.
JustUnfollow: Inactive tweeps? You’re dismissed!
Finally, I fell for JustUnfollow, which is much more than just unfollowing. It’s quick and easy, simple to use and makes it easy to handily dismiss all the folks who are not following me back or are inactive. I am a pro on there as well, and I am very happy with the ease of use and quickness of the app. A pro account costs $9.99/year for a single user but I have a five-user account for $24.99/year.
I ended up pruning around 38,000 followers. Yes, the result of that means that a lot of people are unfollowing me, too. I have gone from having almost 48,000 followers on Twitter to 45,000. But, I really needed to groom and prune because in the race toward more followers I ended up getting lots and lots of weeds, vines and underbrush, basically strangling out air, space and sun. Pruning may be what you need, too, to keep your Twitter profile in good health.
Originally posted on Socialmedia.biz
In praise of social media mediocrity
Social media rewards consistency, persistence, and attention, even if it isn't super-service or if you take a full 24-hours to respond to a query or concern.
My advice for blogging and social media marketing alike is as follows: 20-minutes-a-day with an hour once-a-week. If you spend any less time than that, you're really not a content marketer; however, spending this amount of time on social media brand promotion and protection is really just barely enough time to keep things moving forward.
It's mediocre work and you'll never win any awards for doing the bare minimum; however, if you can keep showing up every work day and then spend an extra hour once-a-week, and you can do that persistently and consistently over time, you'll start seeing some impressive results.
Social media rewards consistency, persistence, and attention, even if it isn't super-service or if you take a full 24-hours to respond to a query or concern (I mean, you're only spending 20-minutes-a-day on it, and probably early in the AM, over lunch, or before you go home).
Come on! You're not @AmericanAir, and you don't need to be. My flight was grounded en route to SXSW, I tweeted complaint, and AA got back to me on Twitter by the time I deplaned -- you probably don't need to offer that much service, do you?
Don't worry, after exploring your competitors online, the bar is really low: everyone has a link to Twitter and Facebook on their web site but very few shops are actively engaged. If you just spend that minimum on your social media, you'll only be participating, you'll only be showing up, but you'll still be out there doing it.
Showing up is good enough for social media marketing. There, I said it. If you can get a mediocre social media marketing campaign up and running, keep it relatively cheap by implementing cheats and software tools, and then keeping it going forever and ever ad infinitum, then you'll be able to benefit from being there, being relatively responsive, over the long-term.
Being mediocre over the course of a very long, fruitful, life is always preferable to being exceptional, burning bright, and then burning out. Participation is key, you don't have to be the star. We're too focused on gold, sliver, and bronze and not focused enough on running the race; we're too focused on the drama of going from the couch to the marathon and not just focused enough on becoming a runner-for-life.
And I see the paradox, too. While I always say that life is a marathon and not a sprint, I was wrong; life is running a few times-a-week for the rest of your life, and so is social media marketing.
Participation is more than good enough for most of us.
Exceptional and world-class athletes are rare-birds -- they're outliers. They're rounding errors. If you're already a world-class social media marketer, a globally-acknowledged digital content marketer, then you're probably not reading this, or at least this far.
And while participation awards are openly mocked in the media, I must put my foot down: just throwing your hat in and committing should be lauded! It's not easy to get out of bed in the morning and put in the training to cross the finish line at a 10k nor is it easy to gear up every day to make it to the dojo or the field, suit up, and leave it all on the field, whether or not you're properly-competitive.
Imagine the sort of heart, persistence, and passion one must have to be an Olympian who knows he'll never medal -- ever; imagine being the racer who knows he'll never even make the Olympics; imagine the racer who never wins a race, ever, but keeps pinning on his bib number, lacing up his shoes, and covering the 5K, 10K, 13.1 miles, or 26.2 miles within his time allotment, to say nothing of all the daily training it takes to even be able to race at all without killing himself.
Most runners will run for about 20 minutes each and every morning with a longer run over the weekend; some runners will put in 45-minutes-a-day with a longer run on the weekend; some runners run three-times-a-week and take the weekends off. It's all good, they're all runners.
Why? Because they run all year long, because they race, because they know how to use a treadmill, because they subscribe to Runner's World, because they wear out shoes every six months or 300 to 400 miles. Any of them, all of them.
But the moment you stop running, you're not really a runner anymore, are you?
The same thing can be said about social media marketing. Just because you set up a bunch of social media profiles, wrote a bunch of blog posts, got a bunch of followers, and even tried out Pinterest and Google+ in a big way, you're not really a social media marketer, guru, maven, or expert, if you're not still monitoring, posting, commenting, and contributing.
Here's the narrative behind my impetus for writing this post: I am participating in the World Erg Challenge with three of my friends. This is an annual challenge that takes place globally, virtually, and in the seats of the Concept2 Indoor Rower, the same rowing machine you see in most gyms and CrossFit studios.
It's a regatta of sorts. And we have a team, Team Grotto. But, unlike a regatta on a river near a fancy college, online races between virtual boats happens not over a weekend but over a month -- at least when it comes to the WEC.
Well, two of the four of my virtual boat mates are animals. They routinely row north of 10,000 meters-per-day -- a 10K-a-day -- and sometimes will make an 8-hour push through a half-marathon, 21k meters, and then 42k meters, a marathon, all the way to 100k meters! Me? I am mediocre, putting in a semi-religious 4,000-7,000 meters/day.
I aspire to do a 10k/day but I peter out closer to 6k/day. And during the last race, I felt terrible. I saw Stephen Dee and Douglas Kim power away from me, tens of thousands of meters ahead of me in the race, and felt constant pangs of guilt and unworthiness until I hit a crossroads: quit or get over it.
I chose "get over it."
And I still aspire to 10K /day. And I am being mentored by Stephen and Douglas, too, and they have great advice like "stop rowing so hard, you'll never make it to 10,000 meters" and "set the PM3 (the rower's computer) to 10,000 meters and keep slow and steady until you make it."
Excellent advice.
I rowed in college so when I get onto the machine, I get competitive, imagining a petite-but-fierce coxswain screaming at me like some tiny Drill Instructor, and I want to pull hard -- but pulling hard isn't the goal of this race, accumulating the most meters possible, over time, between March 15, 2013, and April 15, 2013, is the only metric.
In other words, committed mediocrity is well-rewarded in this challenge: The Tortoise and the Hare exemplified!
The same competitive nature kicks in when I get to work, too. Because I am in the business of social media marketing, my standards are very high. However, I have been doing quite a bit of comparative research, looking at the social media profiles and performance of hundreds of DC-area companies, most of which with revenues well north of 100-million-dollars-per-year -- oftentimes pushing a billion -- and the general consensus is that no matter how poorly you perform your daily social media marketing tasks, you won't nearly be the worst by any means, but if you pattern your social media campaign on their terrible examples, you won't even be mediocre, you'll downright suck at this.
So, while there's quite a distance between social media mediocrity and social media A-list brand celebrity, there's also an equal distance down, and it's dark and treacherous. Consider social media mediocrity to be a de-facto purgatory: neither heaven nor hell.
Being in social media purgatory is not ideal by any means but if you have to choose between A) a hot and heavy, high-resource, social media marketing strategy par excellence only to peter out, becoming a zombie ghost town B) no social media strategy C) hot and heavy but only on Facebook or Twitter (or even just Facebook and Twitter) or D) a consistent, good enough, posting across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Instagram forever and ever, I will always recommend D.
Why? Well, there's nothing worse for a brand reputation than showing abandonment by leaving social media ghost towns, zombielands, or brand placeholders.
And it's not uncommon, either. And the general consensus is that the corporate bean-counters -- the people who control the purse strings -- demand a perceived Return on Investment (ROI) and very few social media marketing campaigns know how to give our bosses the sort of gifts that they need in order to keep a best-in-class, premium, social media marketing campaign running much longer than three-to-six months before the powers-that-be put an end to it.
Like running, social media marketing shouldn't require a lot of start-up costs: a good pair of shoes for running and an Internet-connected computer for marketing through social media. What's expensive for the both is time: running takes time and energy and so does social media marketing.
Social media mediocrity done right should only require a good pair of shoes and some time put aside every morning to put in the time, put in the miles. If you do this every day and have no end-date in sight -- meaning you plan to do this forever -- then you'll see so many changes: your Klout will rise, your followership will increase, your engagement will improve, and your friends, followers, and prospects will get to know and trust you. Before long both you, your bean counters, your bosses, and the powers that be will start seeing the true value of social media and content marketing and they'll probably start giving you the support that you require to take your brand well past mediocrity, well past simply showing up, and allow you the time, money, and support to try out for the social media Olympics and maybe, some day, not only make the team but earn social media gold!
Let me know how it goes, will ya?
Via Biznology
Audienti merges SEO, advertising, and influencer engagement services
If you have a brand site you want to turn into Google catnip, Audienti’s for you.
I have had access to Audienti for a couple years now, back when it was called OMAlab. If you have a brand site you want to turn into Google catnip, Audienti’s for you. The service not only stalks all of your online profiles, including social, but helps you identify and creep all of your competitors, too. So, it spiders through all your pages, looking for issues with your content, the length of your page titles, the length of the copy, and even Flesch Reading Ease.
Audienti looks for broken links, slow loading times, architectural issues like obese JS and CSS code. Audienti asks you for keywords that are important to you and also for companies you consider to be competitors. It’ll ask you for all your Social handles and pages, your Google Analytics creds, and even your Google URL Shortener creds.
Then, after you do this equivalence of giving a big pack of bloodhounds a scent, they’re off and hunting (and you need to come back maybe in a day, depending on how big, old, and complex your site — and everyone else’s site — is).
It’s actually amazing and is actually designed as the most powerful enabler in the world. If you do everything that Audienti recommends, including engaging all the influencers they recommend and walk you through engaging, you’ll actually have the absolutely best site you can, in Google’s eyes, as is humanly possible short of really implementing a super-aggressive content marketing campaign, which will ultimately add more valuable content that Audienti can help you optimize, promote, and then even secure inbound backlinks.
When you first start this, it’s overwhelming; however, Audienti also tries to help you prioritize, helping you choose which of all of the recommendations you should address first — and they’re red (and, ironically, the most important changes you might need to do is upgrade your hosting company, implement a CDN, and hire a coder to optimize your obese CSS and JS).
When I started my practice, it was SEO first, ORM second, and then blogger outreach: 1995, 2003, and 2006, respectively. From 2006-2012, I was a PR purist because if I even mentioned SEO in the same sentence as blogger outreach, the honest and earnest PR intentions of my earned media blogger outreach campaigns were sullied.
What I would say, after the campaign contract was signed and we were on our way, I might mention, as a matter of factr, that the opt-in, earned media, blog posts we secured during our campaigns generally included “white hat” backlinks that were permanent, stable, honest, earned, and worth their weight in gold.
That’s then, this is now.
Now, most of the folks who reach out to me looking for blogger outreach want the Google Juice more than they want the brand media mention. They put restraints on our outreaches, only wanting influencers with a page range of at least 5, or a Klout of at least a 50, or an audience above 100,000.
That’s all well and good. But it doesn’t work! My dear friend Pam Teagarden once asked me about my work in blogger outreach, “Chris, are you like Zeus up on a hill, commanding your bloggers to do your will?”
I answered, “no, I am a beggar in the crowd going from person to person, not only asking them to take a freebie stickers from me but compelling them to stick them all over their car’s bumper, the back of their laptops, emblazoned on their Trapper Keeper, and even stapled to a wooden stake and hammered onto their front lawn!”
People hire me to do all of this by hand and now you know my secret: right after the contract is signed for SEO strategy or SEM consulting, I start on Audienti, popping in URLs, keywords, competitors, and all that, just do I can see deep into what’s going on with my client before I start doing things by hand and coming up with recommendations, many of which are recommendations that Audienti offered me as well.
Of course, actually making those changes isn’t easy and the Audienti software doesn’t do it for you, it’s just yourpathfinder, your Sherpa, yous Search Consiglieri. You’llstill need to hire me in order to do all that work you don’t want to: social media marketing, blogger outreach, andinfluencer-engagement; go through every single page of your (big ass) website to make every change that’s content-driven (and maybe these changes can be fixed with a plugin like Yoast SEO or a free CDN).
That said, the Audienti software is GPS for your Online Brand.
No longer can you just buy backlinks and avoid all the hard work.
Now, Google demands that you not only make your site easy to read, easy to access, and simple to find, but Google demands that you actively engage both your real and your potential community — your neighbors — in a real way via commenting on other peoples’ blogs, mentioning them, connecting with them, retweeting them, sharing them, liking them, and especially creating content that will compel them to do the same for you.
Good luck and go git ’em, Tiger!
Via Biznology
Add For Immediate Release to your podcast queue
Out of thin air, and fulfilling a dream, Shel asked me if I might be willing to join a hand-picked panel of PR professionals and I jumped on it.
A couple Sundays ago I met up withJoseph Thornley, Lynette Young, and Shel Holtz on video Skype to record episode 15 of Shel’s industry-trusted and industry-respected PR podcast, For Immediate Release, AKA the FIR Podcast. Out of thin air, and fulfilling a dream, Shel asked me if I might be willing to join a hand-picked panel of PR professionals and I jumped on it. Here’s FIR #15: THE OPEN WEB VS. CONTENT SILOS:
As you may know by now, I am more of a technologist than a communicator. While earned media influencer outreach may well be as close to traditional PR as you can get online these days, short of calling journalists, my strategies and tactics care as much about spiders and bots as they do column inches and names spelled properly. So, it was an honor to be included. During our hour and thirty-seven minutes together, face-to-face via video Skype, we covered a lot of ground:
- The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has issued explicit new guidance on native advertising. Will this help or hinder the growth of the category?
- Edelman is closing in on a $1 billion year as it wraps ups its more than year-long restructuring. Does the new structure make sense? Should other agencies follow suit?
- In 2013, Congress passed legislation that effectively ended the ban on Radio Free Europe and Voice of America broadcasting within the U.S., a prohibition that went back to the 1940s. Have PR practitioners benefitted?
- Most organizations don’t recognize the downsides to workplace collaboration. How can communicators help prevent or overcome these issues?
- Share buttons are routine website acourtements, but they can cause significant problems. Do we fix them or ditch them?
- Dan York’s Technology Report covers the malware attack on Hyatt, the introduction of adblocking to ASUS’ default browser, and the war of words between Medium founder Ev Williams and blogging pioneer Dave Winer (including a discussion by the panel)
You can connect to all the panelists on Twitter at @shelholtz, @thornley, @lynetteradio, and me, @chrisabraham. Links to the source material for this episode are on Delicious.
Here’s a list of all the panelists:
Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. His clients have included Intel, Sears, PepsiCo, Petrobras, Aetna, John Deere, Manulife Financial, Hewitt Associates, General Mills, USAA, Applied Materials, Symantec, Raytheon, The World Bank, Petrobras, Amdocs, Disney, FedEx, Freescale Semiconductor, The International Monetary Fund, National Geographic, The American Red Cross and Monsanto.
Joseph Thornley is CEO of Thornley Fallis Communications, which comprises several well-known brands:
- Thornley Fallis Communications, a digital engagement and communications consultancy,
- 76design, a digital design and software development studio
- 76engage, an online public participation platform,
- 76insights, an analytics tool focusing on the resonance of social objects and gestures, and
- 76BrandFilms, a video studio.
Joe recognized early the power of social media to change extend and transform our relationships to one another and the institutions in our society. He actively uses social media to explore the evolution of those relationships. Since 2005, he has blogged atProPr.ca, and is co-host with Gini Dietrich and Martin Waxman of the Inside PR podcast, which, since its launch in March 2006, is now the second longest continuously running public relations podcast. (Shel Holtz’s FIR For Immediate Release podcast is the longest continuously running PR podcast.). He is @thornley on Twitter, thornley10 on YouTube andJoseph Thornley on Google+ and Facebook.
Lynette Young is co-founder and Director of Marketing ClaimWizard, a software-as-a-service workflow management system for the public adjuster industry. She is a marketing technology strategist and published author with focus on digital marketing and implementation services. With over 25 years in technology, 17 of those years in digital marketing, she is well positioned as a “full-stack marketer” giving her a distinct advantage in today’s fast paced business and environment.
Over her professional career, Lynette has worked with clients of all sizes ranging from Google, Twitter, Harlequin Publishing, and American Airlines to HVAC installers, an email marketing service provider, local appliance retailers, other agencies, corporate franchises, and public adjusting firms. Lynette heads up the ClaimWizard digital marketing products and team. She maintains her speaking, mind-mapping, and podcasting activities at Purple Stripe Productions.
Chris Abraham, digital strategist and technologist, is a leading expert in digital: search engine optimization (SEO), online relationship management (ORM), Internet privacy, and online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet crisis response. He operates his consultancy at Gerris Corp.
A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and adviser to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in Web 2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.
It was fun and I really hope to be included again in the future, both on FIR and on podcasts and broadcasts in general in 2016. Now, it’s your turn, Tiger! Go git ’em!
Via Biznology
Guest Panelist on FIR
Late last year Shel Holtz actually tapped me and asked me to be a guest on his For Immediate Release podcast. FIR was on my bucket list and it was a really enjoyable experience. I hope to do it again. Let me know what you think.
A couple Sundays ago I met up with Joseph Thornley, Lynette Young, and Shel Holtz on video Skype to record episode 15 of Shel's industry-trusted and industry-respected PR podcast, For Immediate Release, AKA the FIR Podcast. Out of thin air, and fulfilling a dream, Shel asked me if I might be willing to join a hand-picked panel of PR professionals and I jumped on it. Here's FIR #15: THE OPEN WEB VS. CONTENT SILOS:
As you may know by now, I am more of a technologist than a communicator. While earned media influencer outreach may well be as close to traditional PR as you can get online these days, short of calling journalists, my strategies and tactics care as much about spiders and bots as they do column inches and names spelled properly. So, it was an honor to be included. During our hour and thirty-seven minutes together, face-to-face via video Skype, we covered a lot of ground:
- The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has issued explicit new guidance on native advertising. Will this help or hinder the growth of the category?
- Edelman is closing in on a $1 billion year as it wraps ups its more than year-long restructuring. Does the new structure make sense? Should other agencies follow suit?
- In 2013, Congress passed legislation that effectively ended the ban on Radio Free Europe and Voice of America broadcasting within the U.S., a prohibition that went back to the 1940s. Have PR practitioners benefitted?
- Most organizations don’t recognize the downsides to workplace collaboration. How can communicators help prevent or overcome these issues?
- Share buttons are routine website acourtements, but they can cause significant problems. Do we fix them or ditch them?
- Dan York’s Technology Report covers the malware attack on Hyatt, the introduction of adblocking to ASUS’ default browser, and the war of words between Medium founder Ev Williams and blogging pioneer Dave Winer (including a discussion by the panel)
You can connect to all the panelists on Twitter at @shelholtz, @thornley, @lynetteradio, and me, @chrisabraham. Links to the source material for this episode are on Delicious. Here's a list of all the panelists:
Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. His clients have included Intel, Sears, PepsiCo, Petrobras, Aetna, John Deere, Manulife Financial, Hewitt Associates, General Mills, USAA, Applied Materials, Symantec, Raytheon, The World Bank, Petrobras, Amdocs, Disney, FedEx, Freescale Semiconductor, The International Monetary Fund, National Geographic, The American Red Cross and Monsanto.
Joseph Thornley is CEO of Thornley Fallis Communications, which comprises several well-known brands:
- Thornley Fallis Communications, a digital engagement and communications consultancy,
- 76design, a digital design and software development studio
- 76engage, an online public participation platform,
- 76insights, an analytics tool focusing on the resonance of social objects and gestures, and
- 76BrandFilms, a video studio.
Joe recognized early the power of social media to change extend and transform our relationships to one another and the institutions in our society. He actively uses social media to explore the evolution of those relationships. Since 2005, he has blogged atProPr.ca, and is co-host with Gini Dietrich and Martin Waxman of the Inside PR podcast, which, since its launch in March 2006, is now the second longest continuously running public relations podcast. (Shel Holtz’s FIR For Immediate Release podcast is the longest continuously running PR podcast.). He is @thornley on Twitter, thornley10 on YouTube and Joseph Thornley on Google+ and Facebook.
Lynette Young is co-founder and Director of Marketing ClaimWizard, a software-as-a-service workflow management system for the public adjuster industry. She is a marketing technology strategist and published author with focus on digital marketing and implementation services. With over 25 years in technology, 17 of those years in digital marketing, she is well positioned as a “full-stack marketer” giving her a distinct advantage in today’s fast paced business and environment.
Over her professional career, Lynette has worked with clients of all sizes ranging from Google, Twitter, Harlequin Publishing, and American Airlines to HVAC installers, an email marketing service provider, local appliance retailers, other agencies, corporate franchises, and public adjusting firms. Lynette heads up the ClaimWizard digital marketing products and team. She maintains her speaking, mind-mapping, and podcasting activities at Purple Stripe Productions.
Chris Abraham, digital strategist and technologist, is a leading expert in digital: search engine optimization (SEO), online relationship management (ORM), Internet privacy, and online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet crisis response. He operates his consultancy at Gerris Corp.
A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and adviser to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in Web 2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.
It was fun and I really hope to be included again in the future, both on FIR and on podcasts and broadcasts in general in 2016. Now, it's your turn, Tiger! Go git 'em!
Originally on Biznology.
Use Instagram as the starting point to promote your business online
I recently ended my stint as Content and Social Media Chair of MIT Enterprise Forum here in DC and I got to play with the levers and strings of personally promoting online via social media and also trying to get everyone else on the Board to Tweet, Tumbl, and Facebook as well.
I thought about getting everyone to install HootSuite and to Live Tweet through a business social media platform but realized that everyone would hate it.
So, I chose Instagram as ground zero for Live Tweeting events because with just a little set-up, you can take just one filtered square photo with your smartphone using Instagram and you can automagically post to Facebook, Flicker, Tumblr, Twitter, and Swarm with one click -- it just takes a little bold sharing of your organization's Facebook, Flicker, Tumblr, Twitter, Swarm logins and passwords.
I'll be honest, just getting a hold of each Board Member's Smartphone and installing Instagram, logging it in as MITEFDC, and then connecting each device with MITEF DC's accounts on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Swarm, and then just making sure that everyone knew how to use Instagram.
Why use Instagram as a starting point?
Well, people hate text only, people love Instagram, but the folks on the MITEF DC Board were generally not Instagram users so setting them up to dedicate their phone's Instagram app for use only during MITEF DC events is much easier than fooling around with multi-account settings on the Twitter app or anything else.
But what Instagram is really best at is getting people to take pictures of their events and getting them online immediately instead of what usually happens which is never ever seeing any photos as all because they generally never ever leave the data card wedged deep inside the big fancy digital SLR they bring to these events.
Live-tweeting is an essential method of bringing attention to an event, it's an essential way of saying, "look what you're missing, don't you wish you should be here, right?"
Live-tweeting with pictures not only gives followers and fans an intimate insight into what's going on now, now, now. Remember the Internet truism: pics or it didn't happen.
Easier said than done, however. If you install it, will they come? But it doesn't matter.
Really only a couple folks need to be in attendance and taking photos at any event -- but make sure it is every event.
Because while it might be easier to #latergram and #latertweet, there is powerful network effect when a lot of people tweet about the same event in real-time, especially if you can come up with a short, catchy, #hashtag such as #mitevents or #mitefevent or by even adopting salient popular hashtags that already exist such as, in this case, #dcstartuplife #dcstartups #dctech #dcstartup.
But I really don't mean to gum up the works.
As Social Media Chair, it was my job to care about hashtags and and all that; however, just getting the entire staff, board, and team snapping with their own phones, using their dedicated Instagram apps, and capturing their own moments.
Besides, not everyone can be at every event all the time, so redundancy and backups are essential, right?
I even took it one step further: I have an old iPhone 4 with Instagram installed and a cellular plan, dedicated only to being an MITEFDC device. If I know I couldn't make an event, I might palm off the MITEFDC iPhone to someone else who can go, begging them to take some snaps of the event, of some mentoring experience, of the board members, attendees, and the mentors, to the best of their ability.
Remember again, pics or it didn't happen.
To be honest, most events are intimate and ephemeral. Without photos, it really didn't happen.
Without showing people through images, through words, through buzz, you'll never set off anyone's FOMO, their YOLO, and growth will be very difficult.
People want to know what they're missing and if you control the message, you can control the perception as well.
I illustrated this post with photos I took of the last couple MITEFDC events I attended. You'll notice that I keep it very intimate. You'll notice that I am very careful with how I caption each photo to make them as appealing as possible, and as germane to what people need and are looking for as possible.
Use your filters, make everything look good, and feel free to crop and optimize each photo as best you can.
You need to make each photo look like you want to be there. But don't let the night go by without that real-time, behind the scenes, inside the velvet rope experience.
Actually, MITEFDC charges for its events so the photos, the buzz, the excitement, the energy that you can share via social media is the difference between ka-ching and pass.
It actually comes down to these details, to these little shards of reality that turn your even from an robotic, textual, unknown event you might need to schlep a dozen miles in prime time commute traffic into something you'll not want to miss with entry cash in hand ready to get the free mentoring and advice you both need and would actually cost you 1000x were you to not get it through your organization or via MIT Enterprise Forum.
Now it's your turn! Go git 'em, El Tigre!
Via Biznology
Why 9Round should be using SOCi for social media management
OK, this may well be my weirdest post ever, so bear with me. This isn't actually happening; it's theoretical. SOCi is a former client and 9Round is my new HIIT kickboxing gym.
I pay 9Round Penrose money to use their gym. And, as a gym, they're taking over. They currently have 311 locations in 8 countries via franchise. And I noticed that while there are social media profiles for other local 9Round gyms, the new Penrose location has yet to embrace social media. So, instead of pimping the Penrose location directly via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, I only had a nearby gym, 9Round NOVA, and corporate's 9Round Official account to tag and @reply.
It was frustrating. It occurred to me that both 9Round and all their franchisees are 100% percent responsible for all their social, including creating their social media profiles. And when you're risking your butt and starting up a new franchise, no matter how important social may well be for a modern experience, I assume "rocking social" is pretty far down the list of to-dos, understandably.
So, there's a corporate HQ and 311 decentralized studios everywhere. After writing my experience as a new 9Round member, Rob Graveline, owner of 4 gyms here in Northern Virginia and Fitness Together, picked up the phone to call me. He saw the post and we chatted.
While he's got decades of experience as a professional trainer and athlete, digital marketing and social media management isn't his raison d'être, maybe not even his number-one priority (he's running these 4 new gyms and a couple personal training centers, right, so he's a very busy man and all his kids' college money is tied up in their success). And Rob Graveline is awesome, right? He called me (nobody does that) on the phone (nobody)!
I assume that the other 307 franchisees are a mixed bag (proven true by the myriad of random though plentiful 9Round francise handles on Twitter and Instagram) but I do know that 9Round corporate, called 9Round Official on Twitter, @9Round, and on Instagram, @9roundofficial, is doing things right, is a social media maven, and is doing a lot of hard work on behalf of her 311 baby birds.
You know what? To be honest, Mr. Graveline is doing an excellent job with one of his 9Round properties, 9Round NoVa AKA @9rndcourthouse -- but that's only one and he owns 4 of them; he should be running 4 distinct social media LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter properties.
SOCi would be a perfect solution for both 9Round Corporate and Rob Graveline, owner of 4 9Rounds in Northern Virginia.
So, while there are so many unique things that SOCi can do, I'm only going to discuss a very unique feature that makes them the darling of multi-family residence management companies, multi-location dental management companies, and national brands: the ability to organize lots of brand locations under one cohesive social media brand!
In the case of Rob Graveline, M.Ed., if he only has the time and energy to only run @9rndcourthouse, SOCi's hierarchical, multi-location tools would allow him and his social media manager to put the same effort in as he did for one and be able to populate the content for his 4 current gyms as well as all the future 9Round gyms he may well buy in the future. Cool, right? And SOCi is super affordable even for the small business person, though it can easily scale to whatever 9Round HQ could ever need it for.
So, for example:
- 9Round Corporate could now have the ability to post to potentially every franchisee's Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ account, taking pressure off of each franchise owner while concurrently pushing interesting and germane content from 9Round HQ down to every location's social media channel -- with just one click.
- 9Round Corporate could do the important work of curating important health-related content as well as home-brewed 9Round content and news and make sure that good stuff ends up being tweeted, posted, and facebooked across every 9Round location's social media.
- While each location can still be in control of their own daily news, updates, branding, and messaging, they will not all be on the hook to populate the daily bread of content marketing, engagement, response, and the curation and sharing of content.
- Corporate can create and maintain both a message and a photo library of all 9Round locations to borrow from and use, which can make 9Round's voice and tone more consistent across locations, around the world and it can also protect 9Round gyms from getting into licensing and copyright issues by providing photos and graphics that gym owners can use without needing to worry about legal and licensing issues, which can mitigate risk.
- SOCi has this tool called the Design Hub which is a WYSIWYG design tool that can help each location's social media manager design their Twitter and Facebook pages in a brand-consistent and professional way outside of just distributing guidelines via email or in a PDF or book.
- With the message library, both 9Round Corporate and all their locations can have a pre-approved and curated archive of evergreen content that new and seasoned 9Round owners can use when they're too busy to come up with their own witty tweets and posts on really busy weeks.
- New and slow-to-adopt 9Round franchisees will be more willing to set up their social media channels with the knowledge that once they (or corporate) set up their new Facebook Page and Twitter Profiles there will already be content that will flow from corporate down to their profiles and pages, taking a lot of pressure off of the folks launching these gyms, especially the folks who are still too new to have any extra time or who are in a position to hire a social media manager.
- There will never ever be a chance for a social media ghost town ever again because no matter how little a studio owner can commit to social media, their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ social media profiles will, at the very least, be receiving updates and content from 9Round Official.
How does that sound? Doesn't that sound cool?
I know, SOCi guys, you can do so much more than simply manage distributed, highly complex, hierarchical, and persistent social media campaigns! I know! But, you do this thing so well and it hasn't been until I finally fell in love with 9Round as a gym and as an idea that I saw them and SOCi as the chocolate and peanut butter that they are: hey you got peanut butter in my chocolate, together, they're as delicious as a social media Reese's.
I want to stress that nobody's paying me for this, though I might very well be pandering (I'm always pandering). SOCi is a former client and 9Round would be an awesome client. The reason why I am doing this is because I am always trying to offer interesting social media solutions for you, my gentle reader, most of which must be theoretical and illustrative. In this case, it made a lot of sense because these two brands are perfect for each-other, though any syndicated studio would work: CrossFit, [solidcore], SoulCycle, Bikram Yoga, Gold's Gym, XSport, Planet Fitness, Sport&Health Clubs, Equinox, 24-Hour Fitness, Bally Total Fitness, Curves, Snap Fitness, Life Time Fitness, et al.
Now, what're you gonna do? I know! Go git 'em, Tiger!
Via Biznology
The business of reviews and search for small hotels and restaurants
While my experience with doing business, keeping connected, sharing my experiences live via social media, and the immediate feedback loop and power of writing reviews, live-tweeting, and live social media sharing when you're abroad, as restaurateurs, hoteliers, diners, and hotel guests, is limited in this particular scenario, I do have some influence and expertise in the space.
If you run a small hotel, restaurant, cafe, or small business, you can win my business away from Marriott International by just being awesome and having all your guests gush about you online in authentic, open, persuasive, and passionate reviews and testimonials.
And, over the last week, I have had an amazing experience with a local hotel that should never have earned me as a guest but did. And, I fully intend to return. And this is how the charming hoteliers did it.
Just a week before needing to fly to my common law brother's, Mark Harrison's, destination wedding to Jacky Baumgarten. It was last-minute as well as high season in Costa Rica and there were very few choices.
My girlfriend was looking through Expedia and discovered the Finca Buena Fuente Residence Hotel for only $90 USD-per-night, compared to $400-$600/night for the condos and rooms at The Westin Playa Conchal, where the wedding was held. Yikes!
What made her fall in love with Finca Buena Fuente, though, were the stellar reviews from dozens of devoted guests who simply gushed about the Italian owners, Luka and Livia, the amazing meals, especially breakfasts, and the tranquil and quiet experience of a very lovely Costa Rican style hotel as opposed to a Napa resort that happens to be in Playa Conchal, Costa Rica, taking US dollars and offering elegantly curated experiences, protected from Costa Rica's authentic pura vida experience or any need for any Spanish at all.
So, the time comes. I arrive in Liberia, Costa Rica, rent a sedan, and head the 1 hour that my GPS indicated, over fine roads, then end up on a rutted dirt road, then up a hill, then into a property. I hailed a man I learned later was Luka, owner of the hotel. He led me to my room, he guided my car through light off road, and to my free parking.
I had free Wifi. No password. I had amazing cell service. When I checked in, the guest book was filled with paragraphs of praise and thank yous. While the room was spartan, while there was no room service or 5 star amenities (I really could have used a hotel bar), it had what I really wanted and needed: a bed, air conditioning, and sweet well water to guzzle (I really didn't need a drink, I needed hydration).
What I notices over the next few days was revealing.
A couple days later, Expedia asked me via email how I liked my stay. I wrote a stellar review, as I had two days under my belt to experience the amazing view of the night sky and the trillions of visible stars (zero light pollution at Finca Buena Fuentes), the homemade bespoke breakfasts made with confections mostly made by Livia: homemade bread, yogurt, butter, juice. The eggs are local, the steak salad I had was local and grass fed. The juice was fresh watermelon, the watermelon, melon, pineapple, and papaya was locally picked.
I wrote such a review but commented that my single bed was terrible, the mattress didn't support me, the size was too small for my very big body. I submitted the review, finished breakfast, and left for the day.
When I returned, Livia found me, brought me to my room, opened a door, and showed me the adjoining room with its king size bed. She offered me the room as a free upgrade in order to make sure I had the quality of sleep and comfort I deserved as a guest.
That review that I did found her real-time and she adjusted her behavior immediately, and before the end of the day I was hooked up with much more comfortable sleeps.
If you're not the Westin Golf Resort & Spa Playa Conchal, or similar top-shelf properties, you live and die by your reviews and you live or die by making it as easy as humanly possible to encourage people to write and share of their experiences on your property as well.
It was super-windy when I was there and the WiFi was either spotty or accessible from my room, but that kept me coming to their dining area to catch up. I don't believe it's intentional on their side, but after I secured their WiFi password (12345678), I was on and I could turn off my data plan while roaming and then sync my photos and upload all my pictures and experiences to Instagram via #latergram, posting my trip asynchronously the moment I could get back online.
Compare that to the Westin Playa Conchal property, which took up hundreds of acres near the beach: you're either a guest who can charge the WiFi to their room or be willing to pay for access while you're there. Their property is obviously very gorgeous. A 5-star international resort with condos and hotels and a golf course and spa, restaurants, a gorgeous beach, lots and lots of wild Coatimundis, howler monkeys, and all that fun stuff. But I couldn't live share any of this to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, real time, so I wasn't feeling incented to take photos there, really, or not nearly as often.
I was so impressed as to how well Luka and Livia responded to my needs, my discomfort, and were willing to respond almost immediately.
Of course, one must admit that when it comes to the social media most important to travel and tourism, it often comes down more to that metanet known as travel review sites. From my cursory search, TripAdvisor rules, Expedia is a top player, and Yelp dropped the ball by not being in Costa Rica at all. Google is still trying to catch up with its own reviews, and I did write a review for Google as well. That said, Google does dominate search, and their meta-listing at the top of a Google search might make the review there quietly essential. TripAdvisor is also the main feeder for most travel aggregator and bookings websites.
Okay, so on the last night, the wedding party went out together to a restaurant called The Spot Brasilito, owned by at least one French man. While they did have a password-protected WiFi, there were two WiFi spots that were free, open, and unprotected. All of us quickly joined that network and were were live sharing, live Tweeting, posting to Instagram. I generally have no problem asking my server for passwords, but it's always much nicer to have access for free without restriction or password protection. I should check my bank account because these networks might very well be honey traps to collect our data; or, I would like to think, that they may be a service offered by the Costa Rican town of Brasilito. Who knows.
I am sure, if I were a guest of Westin Playa Conchal Resort, I would have complete WiFi access. But if the Westin is also a destination for weddings, for restaurants, for golf, and other events, and since the Westin is so remote and covers hundreds of acres and at least a hundred meters of beach, I feel like the greed associated with not allowing unfettered access to property WiFi is just money-grabbing and downright antisocial, especially when most of your guests are foreigners who probably don't get to lean on their wireless data bandwidth bundles.
But, what does the Westin care? If you bundle them with their new parent, Marriott International, they've got a $24 billion dollar valuation. This experience and advice is was more essential when you're competing for attention with an entire industry that's rigged against you.
Out of nowhere, I booked a ticket from our kitchen table in Arlington, Virginia, and ended up staying in a little Costa Rican hotel owned by an expat Italian couple, Luka and Livia, who have such a positive following, such a gushing fan base so willing to write their praise down, that they're a very bright light, a strong beacon, and powerful attractor, in a country that I am sure is super-saturated and rife with little pension hotels, pensiones.
If you do your work and make sure you empower the people around you, if you heavily invest in all the travel sites and social network business pages, and if you have the unending support and devotion of everyone who has ever visited your little Northern Italian restaurant and little hotel, like Luka and Lilian obviously have, then you, too can bubble up out of obscurity and develop, easily, an international reputation.
I know that I will go back and I want to share Finca Buena Fuente Hotel with my friends and even my girlfriend, if not for a long stay, at least for a meal, a breakfast, a visit just to see Luka and Livia.
But also remember, the success of the Finca Buena Fuente Hotel is not simply Expedia, Trip Advisor, Google+, Facebook Pages, or even Search, it's the cult of personality known as Luka and Livia. So, that's your first step: stop being so professional and open your heart and allow your visitors and guests to get to know your very own Luka and Livia. Everything will ripple from there.
Via Biznology
Audience Lab is a secret weapon for political advertisers
Audience Lab is a secret weapon for political advertisers who are interesting in only reaching their target audience surgically every time instead of wasting time, money, and goodwill by firing for effect at best and carpet bombing at worst.
If you've ever run a successful retargeting ad campaign, you know how powerful the effect is of being able to associate browsers to sites through cookies. What Audience Lab does is harness the power of retargeting but across 800 million cookies over 91% of internet-connect devices through Clickagy's network partners. This is game-changing.
While there seems to be a lot of money in politics these days, including war chests of well over $150 million and opaque infinite fonts of wealth known as Super PACs, nobody wants to throw money away. Display and contextual advertising is surprisingly rife with click fraud and even the best sellers of segments are firing for effect when it comes to reaching the demographic audiences they are selling to advertisers.
Sadly, there's very little incentive to end click fraud or plug the leak of wasted money that's being thrown at segments that aren't transparent, are too broad, have no flexibility, and are the same segments being sold to everyone else--because a lot of advertising agencies make their money based on ad spend not based on efficacy.
Being able to identify each person down to his or her web browsing history, segmenting only those exact people who have proven their synergy with your campaign through their actual historical online behavior is the holy grail of political advertisers because political advertising is as much war as it is marketing.
Why war? Well, if you are promoting gun control, you do not want to reach anyone who has spent time on the NRA.org website or on Fox News. The less the gun lobby knows the better the chances that they won't be able to mount a counter-offensive.
The same thing with the presidential race: if you can whittle down your focus to only folks who have visited a bonafide pro-Ted Cruz website in the last 30-days, you can make sure that your advertising message can remain mostly discrete, mostly kept within the sphere of silence of the thousands, tens-of-thousands, or hundreds-of-thousands of people who meet your exact criteria-- keywords, page URL, domain, hyperlocal geography, device type, operating system, browser -- then you could use advertising for more than just candidate promotion but for negative messaging against the other candidates or against the other party.
You could readily use ads in support of crisis response, reputation management, and online advertising could easily become one of the most important weapons in your PR and communications utility belt -- all without being vulnerable to the advertising black arts, including your competitors using click fraud as a way of spending all your advertising budget.
With the promise of big data and Moore's Law, I've always assumed that the state of the art in targeted online advertising is in the rarefied air of the technology running the NSA Utah Data Center or the automated trading systems (ATS) buying and selling in marketing around the world. It's really not true. There's a lot of promises but very little incentive, as I said before.
Now, with the launch of their Audience Lab product, every challenge, scenario, and example I discussed above is readily addressed. You can dig down, almost real-time, into the hyper-granular. You can break your monolithic advertising messaging down to hyper-targeted and hyper-local hearts and minds messaging, and you can even do A/B testing with display ads as readily and effectively as you can with email marketing -- all without needing the sort of double-secret quadruple opt-in scheme required by the CAN-SPAM Act.
Now, you can reach them, and only them -- meaning all the right people -- right now, whether they've ever heard of your brand, your message, or your candidate or not.
I first got to know Clickagy back when they were only mastering programmatic ad buying. Later, the Clickagy leadership realized that being successful demanded working well with others and not stomping them, so they developed tools to separate out their data component from their DMP so that they could sell their unparalleled database of ~880 million cookies collected in any 30-day period and access to the behavioral data on 91% of internet-connected devices every month while allowing their clients to use their own third-party ad networks and exchanges.
When a company like Clickagy analyzes trillions of behavioral data points across over a billion devices, the future is now, especially when the interface doesn't require Wendy Scherer's mad boolean skills or the occult touch of a regex god but is just drag and drop, allowing anyone to sift through the data points until you've whittled it down to your own personal bespoke segment.
Then, you can save or export, and them move on to your next perfect-but-different segment. Good to go. Now, go git 'em, Tiger!
Via Biznology
Build a page and profile for absolutely everything
if you have multiple locations and/or multiple products, you need to create social media channels for every single one of them. If you have several 9Round franchises in Northern Virginia, you need to have a Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and Foursquare/Swarm profile for each one.
Why? People are mobile.
Nobody wants to tag a 9Round gym in Courthouse when the one they're using is in Penrose Square off Columbia Pike. If you don't have a profile for each discrete location on every germane social network then you will lose a majority of the magic associated with real-time social media mentions and tagging (live tweeting, instagramming, and Facebooking, generally) -- magic that will promote that particular gym.
Each and every store, gym, yoga/Spin/solidcore/pilates/barre studio -- even if they're part of the same brand -- will have it's own unique culture based on the people who go there, the neighborhood, the true-believers, and the super-influencers like my 9Buddy Jeanne Boone, in the case of Pacers and 9Round.
Both Pacers and 9Round Northern Virginia do it wrong: they have one brand account for the region.
I want to argue that it's better to find ways to allow each and every shop to have both their own voice, but also the voice of their owners (with as much help from corporate as possible.)
As you all know, I am a freshly-converted 9Round true-believer. I am also a social media marketer would would really like 9Round as a client because I can help them, be it 9Round Corporate, 9Round franchisees, or both.
So, when I had the chance to meet the local 9Round franchise owner, Rob "Big Daddy Thunder (BDT)" Graveline, and operations god, Daniel Albrant,
I knew I was barking up the right trees. Well, I met Dan yesterday for coffee at Northside Social and we chatted about social media, SOCi, and all the other thoughts tinkling around in our heads.
Let me reiterate what I believe: most local venues are live-tweeted and checked into locally when they're there, on the move. Insta is even more time-sensitive because not everyone has the patience to #latergram.
So, if you want someone on Instagram to tweet, Facebook, tumbl, Swarm, and Flickr you while also inline @tagging (crossing over to Twitter) and tagging you (for Insta) while also checking in to you (via Swarm or Facebook), then you had better get you ducks in a row.
I bandited @9RoundPenrose because I want to mention my new 9Round Gym. Today I might bandit and set up pages on Google+ and Facebook as well. We'll see (with the intention of giving the keys over to Rob and Dan ASAP (unless they want to pay me to get these going, wink). That said, I've already handed the keys of the Penrose location Twitter handle to Dan, so how banditty is it, really?
My reasoning is solely based on my own personal behavior as well as the behavior of my 9Round 9Buddy, Jeanne, who is a maestra of of tagging, @tagging, and #tagging, so I have been stalking her behavior a little bit and while she is always mentioning both @9Round Official and @9rndcourthouse AKA 9Round NOVA AKA the catch-all for the four or so 9Round locations owned by Rob Graveline and his posse.
That's just the point: Jeanne and I are always tagging every tweet we share, and we always live tweet before and after whenever we leave everything on the mat every time we spend our 30 at the Penrose location.
But, the place we have to tag is not promoting this brand new gym in a brand new location--that's not in view of the street, tucked rather out of the way between a dry cleaners and a hairdressers, in the basement, near the entrance to the garage, under a Giant grocery store.
In a world of Swarm (it seems to be catching on some, at least Jeanne's using it, which is the next-gen Foursquare, which means that anybody checking into Swarm alerts all their friends and the people around them that you are at 9Round Penrose, under the Giant, on Columbia Pike, and not in Courthouse near the Metro) and in a world if live-tweeting (where most people who tweet only have 300+ friends and those friends live around and near them) and on Instagram and Facebook, where Checking-In is really built in and is not only super-popular but highly location-aware, all these location-aware apps would never suggest places that are at least 2.9 miles away.
So, that's my advice to you, gentle reader, and not only Rob, Mike, and the founders of 9Round, Shannon Hudson and Heather Hudson -- I am making the same recommendation to you. It's not about feeding all your users, members, prospects, and friends away from their own personal favorite store, shop, studio, or gym, it's about meeting the needs of people like Jeanne Boone and me, people who spend a lot of our time living our lives online, which includes at lease one free earned media shoutout every single day, except Sunday.
Now, I won't even go into the responsibility that every single owner, staffer, investor, and member has towards tweeting, sharing, liking, retweeting, and checking-in every time you clock in or check in at your locations or in general. In addition to your branded pages, you all need to get off your duffs, get off of your LinkedIn-only high-horses, and make sure you start messaging about your brand and your gym and your raison d'etre on your own personal profiles and pages as well. Life is like Amway: your first and most loyal customers are your loyal friends and followers -- why are so many of you afraid to share your passion, your vocation, your calling, and the thing that's tying up your kids' college money? They should be the first people you spam! Right?
Anyway, that's enough for today. I have a business call in 20-minutes. Now it's your turn: go git 'em, Tiger!
Via Biznology
The state of the blogger outreach union ten years on
The state of the union of blogger outreach is good for brands and agencies but great for the bloggers and online influencers
I stared my first blogger outreach agency back in 2006. Called AbrahamPR it evolved into Abraham Harrison a year later.
Now Gerris Corp, I am still offering influencer engagement campaigns to my clients.
Ten years on, the state of the union of blogger outreach is good for brands and agencies but great for the bloggers and online influencers.
Blogging Isn’t Cool
Tell anyone that you’re a blogger or a podcaster and you’ll know what I mean. While there are more people than ever who are dipping into the content produced by bloggers every day, starting a new blog from scratch is so dispiriting that many potential bloggers are instead writing for Tumblr, Medium.com, Facebook Notes, or the LinkedIn Publishing Platform. Or, just dropping blurbs here and there on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and even Google+.
Blogging is Hard
I just started a new blog called RNNR.us and it’s my attempt at bullying myself into becoming the athlete I used to be in my bloom of youth. Now, 100 pounds and sore knees later, I started RNNR to track my runs, my time sweating and kickboxing at 9Round, swinging kettlebells, on the Concept2 indoor rower, and hopefully to share the journey I am taking to get back into runner and rower shape. I am doing my best but it’s a hobby right now so, you know what? Blogging’s hard.
To start, to manage, to maintain, to keep going (forever), especially when it’s an act of love. I really don’t think that influencers realize that no matter how passionate a lifestyle blogger like me might be, if you engage me and proceed to not only waste my time but insult me with your pitch, your offer, your gift and the generosity thereof, then I’m sorry, I am reviewing the cool things that I like and already own for the same “for free” that you’re offering.
And I don’t necessarily need to be paid cash, but I want to feel like I’m spoiled and fussed over. If you make shoes, I want at least a pair, and maybe some swag as well. Any I would love it if you’d brag about me somewhere, too. Because, blogging’s hard and thankless and I am doing my best. The best think in the world would be if Concept2 or Hoka One Onewere to come down from on their respective Mount Olympus to say hello and engage with me — but they’re spending all their time and money on the elites. I think they should spend more of their money and time on us folks lower down the totem pole.
Blogging is Less Competitive in 2016
Because blogging is so hard and so thankless with such low caste and prestige, blogging has become a lot like America: there’s a 1% that makes loads of money from advertising, sponsorship, Google, YouTube, etc, and then there’s a shrinking middle class who won’t do anything unless it’s for money (and they email you a PDF price card first thing when you engage them) and that’s fine; however, if you want the purity and passion that we saw back in the day, back in 2006 when blogging was da bomb (and when da bomb was cool to say), you need to go way deeper and find better ways to punch above your weight
Building a real rapport, building an actual relationship, going for the long term, treating the bloggers with personal “I know you” respect, and then find out what the blogger actually wants and needs (rather than what you want to give) and finding ways to meet that need (money is what people ask for when they’re not very psyched to hear from you — if they love you or learn to love you, they’ll learn to trust you, learn how you can both find win-win-win situations, and then you’ll be true blue. You can’t ask for favors form people you don’t even know yet!
Blogger Outreach is Hard
While there are awesome social media and blogger outreach automated tools such as Audienti and there are amazing Marketing Automation tools out there, the final mile is all about people. And people had better like you because if they don’t love you then you’re just going to come across like those terrible pitches you get via automated robotery on LinkedIn and via DM on Twitter.
The reason why blogger outreach is way harder than it needs to be is because most of you are doing sales instead of doing PR, you’re being a pitch artist instead of a publicist. 99% of every message model I get from clients (and I am sure that Richard Laermergets on his Bad Pitch Blog) must really come from their salesmen. Too many of them read like something a used car salesman might tell you as you walk onto the hot dusty lot along the lines of the false-charming “book of jokes” that you might deliver at Toastmasters. Groan.
But sales might be the right sort of tenacity required to do blogger outreach because blogger outreach is hard because there’s going to be a lot of rejection and even quite possibly enough hostile responses to make your client want to shut down the campaign if you give them too much access to the Inbox.
There are So Many Bad Actors in Influencer Engagement
Speaking of Richard Laermer and his Bad Pitch Blog, it also has been alive and kicking since 2006 as well like Yin to my Yang. And although there have been bad actors since the very beginning when it came to pitching bloggers online, at least back in 2006 they were just asshole PR douchebags who resented that they were obviously being punished for something they did in order to be saddled with the offense and insult of reaching out to so-called lame-ass bloggers. Now, everyone is doing it thanks to the sweet suite tools coming from Cision and GroupHigh and InkyBee and Little Bird.
And, because advertising has become so competitive and expensive and because Google cares more about blogger and social media inbound links than any other links, and because search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing (blogging) are no longer snake oil but literally the only thing that could remotely get you onto the first page of Google circa 2016, it’s not only getting supper real all up in here but now all the douchebags aredouching everywhere.
Folks who have previously been rocking and rolling inbound link-building robot and zombie armies are doing blogger outreach now, sales people who are as subtle as a punch to the neck are doing it. There are so many bad actors that you’re going to have to develop Adamantium bones and you’ll have to wear Body Armor with Ballistic Plate for a while until — maybe a long while — until you can get remotely close to even a hello wave to think nothing of a handshake, a back pat, to say nothing of an air kiss, a hug, or even a smooch square on the lips.
Assume every blogger you ever reach out to had been jilted, abused, hurt, rejected, loved and left, and then the good old disappearing act… poof! It’s not you, it’s them. But you’re different, you’ll just need to suffer through all the sins of all the blogger and influencer outreachers before you. Never, ever, ever lash out. Take it like a gender of your choosing.
Good luck and go git ’em, Tiger!
(Via Biznology)