Content Strategy: Make an idea into dozens of influence building social interactions
Posted on 01. Sep, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Content Strategy, YouTube and has 0 Comments
Content strategy is all about publishing content. You need to create a high volume content mill with minimal cost and overhead. To do so you need a system that maximizes interactions for each content event. This process allows you to turn simple content ideas into dozens of influence building social interactions. (more…)
Deciding which social networks to focus on
Posted on 15. Aug, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Inbound Marketing, Social Media and has 0 Comments
Focus is important in social media. Without focus it can be like boiling the ocean. So when marketers new to social media begin they wonder which social networks they should focus on. Twitter? LinkedIn? Do they need a Facebook Fan Page? How about MySpace? A YouTube Channel? Flickr? The list goes on.
Wikipedia maintains a list of social networking websites with a column for registered users. It’s shocking how many social networks there are with over 10 million registered users that I haven’t heard of before. Habbo, a social network for teens has over 160 million registered users, over 8 million unique visitors per month, and 75,000+ new registrations per day!
Marketers should look at two things – Audience reach and search engine optimization (SEO). Many times the two are exclusive. For some clients work on getting lots of content on YouTube and a high volume of impressions when it’s not the best site for their audience. The fact is, the YouTube pages get highly ranked in search engines.
An April 2010 study, Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Michael Stelzner of 1900 marketing professionals showed that by far Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs were the top four social media tools used by marketers.
My advice is to target the top 4-5 sites and be sure to include social bookmarking sites separate. You should plan to bookmark new content on a few social bookmarking sites like digg, Stumble Upon, Yahoo! Buzz. Do your research; you may find 1 or 2 sites you haven’t heard of that service your audience. If your audience is teen then discovering Habbo could be a big opportunity.
The CMO’s Guide To The Social Media Landscape from CMO.com, prepared by 97th Floor, an SEO and social media firm, is an interesting take on the top 10 choices.
Prepare healthy lunches for the work week in 10 minutes
Posted on 01. Aug, 2010 by Dean Whitney in productivity and has 0 Comments
Not too many of us can honestly say we don’t need to lose fat. To achieve this our diets should consist of a very high amounts of lean protein and green water based veggies, like sprouts, salad greens, celery and avocado. As for vegetables the closer to raw the better to deliver those healthy enzymes to our intestines to help with overall digestion and nutritional absorption.
If you are like me, when it gets busy at work your diet is the first thing to go. When we resort to fast food take-out, delivery, catered lunches typically equates to bursting buttons on your waistline. These foods are so irregular we tend to eat meals with the wrong mix of protein, carbohydrates and vegetables.
Often the meals have too high bread/pasta to meat/protein ratio. The cookies, fruit or high-calorie frappachino really throws the sugar/carb intake over the top. Furthermore we find ourselves dragging our feet or nearly comatose come 4PM. Our coffee intake sky rockets, water intake drops and the coffee is a diuretic making half of that water pass right through.
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Features Matrix Scorecard for agile project management
Posted on 15. Jul, 2010 by Dean Whitney in User Experience, process, productivity and has 0 Comments
One of the biggest challenges for agencies and clients is keeping interactive projects right-sized and avoiding scope creep. The Features Matrix Scorecard is a tool for managing technology, business and user experience requirements and selecting a software platform. The goal is to reduce the scope and complexity of the project; thus reducing cost and risk while greatly increasing the likelihood for a happy and successful project launch. In the IT world it’s been proven statistically that the higher the project cost the chance of failure increases exponentially.
IT projects above $500k have a 1 in 5 chance of failure. And the research shows that out of the successful projects the ranks aren’t all 5 stars; so it would be safe to say more than half are just above the ‘acceptable’ line. Today’s marketing and user experience projects have so much technology tied in these days its smart to use an agile approach and build up incrementally. When building a house you don’t start with the marble tile; you begin with the foundation. The Features Matrix helps you define a solid foundation to build your solution. Iterative enhancements can put your product on the road to success. (more…)
Positive Social Proof
Posted on 01. Jul, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Marketing, Social Media, psychology and has 0 Comments
Social proof, also known as informational social influence, occurs in social situations when people are not sure how to behave. They make the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation and assume the behavior of others will yield the best outcome.
“Positive Social Proof” is similar to the “Bandwagon” or “Cromo Effect” in that people tend to join a way of thinking, a movement or in an activity. When introduced to the environment they see clear indications that its very popular with people either similar to people they are attracted too (celebs, wealthy, sexy). (more…)
Sex and Social Media
Posted on 15. Jun, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Marketing, Social Media, research and has 0 Comments
Just as social interaction has evolved over the years so has marketing. The pick-up lines that worked for hipsters would fall flat today just as marketing tactics of the the 80’s wouldn’t earn customers in the Facebook age. It seems a lot less successful pick-up artists are spouting Austin Powers pick-up lines while marketers seem quite content in going for the quick hit in their attempts at customer acquisition.
Today’s playing field has changed and requires a different approach. Sex & Social Media examines the effective pick-up artist and how it applies to new marketing in the age of social media. (more…)
Cisco Visual Networking Index
Posted on 06. Jun, 2010 by Dean Whitney in mobile, research, video and has 0 Comments
Over the past three years, the Cisco Visual Networking Index has become a highly regarded measure of the Internet’s growth. National governments, academic researchers, telecommunications companies, technology experts and the business press have all taken a keen interest in what the company’s annual study has to say about our digital future.
Interesting to note how mobile data and video and impacting internet growth.
“Device influence” is one of their toughest challenges these days. More and more types of communications devices, from smart phones to video chat tools, are hitting the market. Anticipating the effect of such never-before-seen technology is difficult. Growth of iPad 3G, 4G phones, or new unanticipated devices such as a mobile phone service called digital photo frames has virtually overnight created a surge of new subscribers and traffic.
Hubspot internet marketing software
Posted on 01. Jun, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Inbound Marketing, Social Media, Start-ups and has 0 Comments
HubSpot offers an Internet marketing application that helps businesses with their social marketing and SEO strategy and lead generation and conversion efforts. The company is behind tools like Website Grader, which essentially audits websites for their search engine friendliness, and boasts similar tools specifically for Twitter and Facebook. (more…)
Social media account management tools
Posted on 15. May, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Marketing, Social Media, tools and has 0 Comments
Managing a Twitter account can be a challenge but managing multiple Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts with a team can be outright mind boggling. Fortunately there are a number of great tools out there to do the trick. Which one is the best? For now the award goes to Hootsuite. (more…)
Chat with Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan
Posted on 29. Apr, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Inbound Marketing and has 0 Comments
I had the opportunity to visit Brian Halligan at the Hubspot office in Cambridge, MA on Tuesday (April 27th, 2010). This is my second visit to Hubspot and the first time they were about 100 people smaller at a different office. Now they have outgrown their new space in Kendal Square a stone’s throw from MIT and Microsoft’s NERD (New England Research and Development) Center. (more…)
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