Derek Handova's Social Media Review

I'll be reviewing the various downloads and articles from companies promoting their social media, content marketing, email engagement, and PR software and services. I download the PDFs so you don't have to!

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Social Media can benefit from Predictive lead Scoring

What's Predictive Lead Scoring and how can it help your social media marketing methodologies?

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Community Management Important as Content? One White Paper Makes the case

While content is king for marketing, there is more to it than that. You'll need an audience to take up all your pithy observations on the B2B landscape. One white paper attempts to illustrate how to scale your audience to consume all your content. This blog post will examine that white paper.

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Customer Success Stories are Passé, but what can Replace Them?

If you have worked for a B2B company, no doubt you have encountered the traditional Problem/Solution/Product format customer success story, also known as a case study.

One new social media white paper says they are outdated and on the way out. But you will never guess what the suggested alternative will be, so tune in soon to find out.

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5 Ways to Measure Content Marketing Effectiveness

A new report has come out on five ways to measure content marketing effectiveness. Come back soon for a review on that report.

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Eight Ways to Generate Publicity?

What do you think? Are there more or less than eight ways to generate publicity? Stay tuned and find out soon!

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What do Dante and Email Marketing have in Common?

"Derek Handova's Social Media Review" says that SendGrid's email marketing white paper Highway to Hell details the pitfalls of the Seven Deadly Sins of electronic direct marketing in a manner similar to how Dante illustrated the travails of a trip through Hades in The Inferno. Photo credit: paukrus / Foter / CC BY-SA

As modern-day marketers, we all want to take advantage of the latest and trendiest communications channels, whether they are image-based social channels like Pinterest or text and emoticon-based such as Viber. However, as I have discussed earlier email marketing remains one of the most effective avenues to reach your customer base. But to make the most of your email marketing efforts you must stay out of “email hell” as SendGrid puts it. And as Dante found on his journey through Hell in The Inferno, there are many pitfalls along the way on your journey to Heaven and the Celestial Seat of the Almighty.

SendGrid had the excellent idea to construct their superbly short white paper Highway to Hell: Top 7 Fastest ways to land in the Email Underworld along the lines of the Seven Deadly Sins, which many have familiarity with from the Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman film Seven (1995).

"Derek Handova's Social Media Review" says that SendGrid's white paper Highway to Hell: Top 7 Fastest Ways to land in the Email Underworld will keep your email marketing results heavenly. Screenshot by Derek Handova

Suffice it to say that the greatest danger to your electronic direct marketing efforts can be reduced to greed, envy, sloth, lust, pride, gluttony and anger—but not necessarily in that order. In fact the order in which SendGrid addresses the seven deadly sins of email marketing are :

Sloth

Wrath (anger)

Gluttony

Greed

Lust

Pride

Envy

Sloth: Trusting Third-Party List Management SendGrid advises that no one should be trusted with the quality of your email list except you. Getting lazy (i.e., sloth) with your corporate crown jewels can be the road to ruin as well as the highway to hell. You must do your own due diligence to sanitize and compile your contacts database. While there are legitimate third party mailing databases out there such as vertical publications and trade organizations, direct marketing data providers of other sorts should be looked at with the gimlet-eyed gaze of an auditor from Accenture, Deloitte or PwC.

In any event, purchasing or renting third-party mailing lists is a stopgap measure at best for your direct marketing efforts. The people on these lists may not know anything about your company, let alone your name. They are very likely to mark your messages as spam, gaining you blacklisting by the major email service providers (ESPs) Gmail, Yahoo! and Outlook.com (the former Microsoft Hotmail). Even worse, these same spam labelers may report you to the Federal Trade Commission [email protected] Unsolicited Commercial Email aggregator, which could lead to big legal problems if you continue to spam.

Let’s face it; there is no substitute for building your own contact database the old, slow way with double opt-in protocol. So not only must the subscriber actively sign up for your email messages on your web site and social properties, she must also actively click on the subscription notification in her mailbox when it arrives. SendGrid advises all these safeguards will enable you to avoid the deadly sin of email sloth. Your corporate soul will thank you later.

Wrath: IP Addresses and Sender Reputation Again, getting back to that sticky wicket about the ESPs blacklisting you; given enough time and enough spam flagging of your email, the ESPs will put your email IP address into the lowest circle of Hades, so close to the goat-headed monster that you will be inhaling his sulfur-tinged breath. All of your messages will be flagged automatically and put into the spam or junk folder where they will exist for 30 days or so and then be permanently deleted.

"Derek Handova's Social Media Review" says that Gmail, Yahoo! and Outlook.com will automatically put your marketing email in the spam folder if you earn a bad IP reputation, as detailed by SendGrid's white paper. Photo credit: notoriousxl / Foter / CC BY-SA

So more than you being punished as an angry email bomber, you will be punished as you feel the wrath of the technology titans. SendGrid says that you have to be especially careful if you are mailing more than 100,000 electronic messages a month because this volume of correspondence can kick in automatic throttling. To combat this tendency you must “warm up” your email IP address first.

Apparently, this means familiarizing the ESPs with your IP. You can do this by gradually increasing the rate of your email deliveries over the course of several days for a single campaign. And you need to use a recent, clean list of addresses not more than one year old. As the ESPs see that your emails are not bouncing and being clicked on at a sufficient rate, you will have begun to establish a good reputation for your email IP address. To keep its reputation intact, you must have a dedicated IP address apart from other email functions of your company or any separate online enterprises.

Gluttony: Forgive me Father, for I have Spammed! Spam is the four-letter word of the email marketing discipline to paraphrase SendGrid. Again, they recommend performing a two-step opt-in procedure to doubly confirm that submitted addresses are actually from your would-be subscribers and not some sort of prank by hackers or other evildoers. Gluttony can also be avoided by abhorring those rented or purchased email lists, according to SendGrid.

And to prevent being labeled a spammer, SendGrid proclaims that thou shalt not send overly graphic-oriented emails. It is a well-known tactic of phish scammers to mail a single large graphic in an email with the text of the message embedded in the image. So avoid the forensics of the spam filters, act like a human and write a normal amount of textual content for your email sales pitches.

SendGrid’s final tip regarding ducking being labeled a spammer echoes a sentiment I covered in “Most Dangerous Job in Marketing: Firing Dormant Subscribers Hurts but Necessary” about deleting email subscribers from your database if they have not opened one of your emails within the last three months. These types of passive subscribers are the most likely to flag your marketing emails, of which the ESPs will take note. And why would you keep these names in your contact list? They are not doing anything for you.

Greed: Frequency One of the greatest temptations in all of marketing is the desire to overindulge in exploiting your email list. And while excessive touches to your corporate contact list are to be avoided, as SendGrid rightly touts, it is as great or even a greater business sin to underutilize your mail database, which they do not point out. If the elapsed time between mailings is too great, subscribers could very well forget who you are and again flag you for spam.

A good solution is to set up an email preference center, according to SendGrid. This self-service method of email management allows customers to select their own level of engagement and can avert complete removal. This tip is very important for online retailers who email every single day. Even the most enthusiastic subscriber may become weary of an epistle a day from you hawking wares or promoting contests. Let them select a three times a week email alternative or an end of the week digest email. This last option is very popular with LinkedIn groups, especially very active ones with myriad postings.

Lust: Engagement One of the deadliest of the seven sins of email marketing is lusting after those subscribers you do not have. Or so counsels SendGrid. Do not go chasing the one that got away. Stay faithful to your existing list of email contacts.

You need to nurture your contacts along the lead generation funnel until they are ready to buy. But you have to do it the right way—with care and tenderness. You will have to closely monitor the type of content to which your subscribers respond. If you are still not receiving the response you desire, adjust the day of week and time of day you mail and the frequency with which you email.

And do not treat your subscribers like strangers. Skip sending your marketing email from the ominous “[email protected].” You want to encourage engagement, not alienate your followers. Lastly, if some subscribers have been dormant for some time, retarget them with a special prompt to re-opt in. They will either become re-engaged and an active lead again or they will do you the favor of scrubbing themselves off your list, saving you time and grief in the future.

"Derek Handova's Social Media Review" says that not only will the U.S. email titans blacklist your marketing email if you spam subscribers so will ESPs in smaller nations such as Austria, Germany and others. Photo credit: Franz & P / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Pride: Blacklists As far as the ESPs and their spam regulation allies are concerned email marketers are guilty until proven innocent. And if your emails are out of compliance by even a scintilla do not be surprised if they come down swiftly and hard by putting your email IP address into a blacklist. SendGrid says if you have suffered mass deletes or high complaint rates, you may have been blacklisted. You can check your IP address for blacklisting at security companies such as Proofpoint.

Once you know you are blacklisted do not suffer the Classical Greek tragic flaw of hubris, also known as excessive pride, taking your email campaigns down with you. Quickly admit your wrongdoing and make peace with the ESPs and blacklisters to get back into compliance. Then get to know the players and keep up on email marketing compliance trends to stay out of the penalty box.

Envy: Lack of Resources In closing, SendGrid advises to avoid the most pernicious of all the seven deadly sins of email marketing: envy. Do not look at the competition, begrudge them their success and ascribe it to a better toolset. You can get your own envy-making email marketing toolset to keep your messages out of the sin bin. And by coincidence, SendGrid hawks such a toolset.

SendGrid keeps its unique selling proposition and call to action for the very end: to sign up for their free webinar. And if you found any of the content of this blog post interesting, you should sign up for their webinar. It could be the best 60 minutes of your eternal marketing life!

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

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Three Lessons for B2B Marketers from ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic? One Leading Blogger says ‘Yes’

Derek Handova's Social Media Review: "Weird Al" Yankovic is unaccustomed to industry recognition yet charted his first No. 1 Billboard album in July 2014. How he achieved this through social channels can provide valuable lessons for B2B marketers. Photo credit: insidethemagic / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Fresh Perspective Copywriting blogger Rachel Foster created a piece last week on the responsive marketing practices B2B practitioners can learn from veteran music parody artist “Weird Al” Yankovic in the wake of the digital release of his full-length album Mandatory Fun in July. She thought this was significant because “Weird Al” had achieved his first No. 1 Billboard ranked album ever—in fact, it has become the first No. 1 comedy album by anyone since 1963—Allan Sherman hit No. 1 that year with “My Son, the Nut.”

Having had a casual familiarity with “Weird Al” since my high school and early college days, I was curious to see what timely B2B marketing tidbits I might possibly pick up from the man who first made his mark in 1979 with his “My Bologna” sendup of one-time New Wave darlings The Knack. Full disclosure: my older brothers both attended “Weird Al’s” college, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, in California. I do not believe that either of them ever met Al, but commonality of educational institution is no doubt how I first became aware of this great comic genius of our time.

According to Rachel, the three B2B lessons that digital marketers can draw from “Weird Al” include:

Understanding what channels your customers are using

Being responsive

Not using any of the words (from the “Weird Al” video “Mission Statement”)

I’ve been following Rachel’s blog for most of 2014, and I find her takes on B2B marketing insightful and quickly implementable into any anticipated or ongoing B2B corporate campaign. Conciseness is one of her virtues. She doesn’t disappoint on this latest blog. Let me elaborate on exactly what I mean.

Understanding what channels your customers are using As we all know, B2B social and content marketing options are vast and always increasing. Whom 12 months ago was thinking of SnapChat or WhatsApp as a corporate option for publicity or promotion? And 12 months before that, Pinterest and Instagram were but twinkles in the eyes of most CMOs. Rather than drive yourself insane keeping abreast of all the myriad channel options, Rachel advises—and rightly so—B2B marketers can learn from “Weird Al” that you only need to be in the social and content marketing channels where your audience (i.e., customers) is located. For example, Yankovic saw that his niche audience was very active on YouTube and therefore he conceived of the master plan to release eight videos of all eight songs on the Mandatory Fun album over the course of eight consecutive days in July 2014.

Derek Handova's Social Media Review: B2B lesson one from "Weird Al" according to copywriting blogger Rachel Foster is give up the idea of being in every marketing channel and just concentrate on the ones most important to your particular customers. Photo credit: davemc500hats / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).

Actually, finding the channels where your customers “hang out,” as Rachel puts it, should not be a gargantuan task. A little active social listening should reveal “where the boys are” as Connie Francis once sang in the song of the same name. Just scan the posts your company receives on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the other channels already used by corporate. In addition, make sure to search for any stock ticker symbols (e.g., CHKP for Check Point Software Technologies), shortened company references (e.g., Frost instead of Frost & Sullivan) or official/unofficial acronyms/abbreviations (e.g., PwC for PricewatershouseCoopers, VzW for Verizon Wireless).

Rachel notes that “Weird Al” to this point has concentrated on full album downloads but will be switching to iTunes singles in order to be timelier with his parodies. Yankovic is just following his audience’s lead and its ever-decreasing attention span. He’s probably lucky “Word Crimes,” his parody of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” from March 2013, was still remembered well enough to be relevant to some of his younger listeners in the summer of 2014.

Similarly, marketers need to follow their customers to the channels on which that they are located. This only makes logical sense. If you are tweeting but your customers are an older demographic that does not use Twitter, it is as if you never said anything at all. A tree that falls in the forest with no one around still makes a sound, but who would ever know it fell in the first place?

Being responsive This brought Rachel to her next observation that “Weird Al” first and foremost was being responsive to fans with this release of all eight videos from Mandatory Fun at virtually the same time. The overlapping buzz developed from the eight videos drove viewership for outlets where Yankovic’s music was featured to new heights—by a factor of 23 in one case. Al and his people—I would hope that Al has an entourage, even though he is goofy and nerdy—had the savvy to see that this strategy could work in the vastly altered aural landscape compared to when he first came on the scene. Each video became a hit in its own right before the release of the full album and can stand alone outside the framework concept. Having proved all his album videos/singles can hold up individually, we can all look forward to more frequent enjoyment of the “Weird Al” experience.

The lesson here is to see what format your customers are demanding. Do they like a lot of small frequent touches such as one, two or three emails per week or multiple Facebook postings in one day? Or would they be satisfied with just a summary wrapup email of the latest happenings in your company and industry at the end of the week, month or quarter, depending on how many activities have occurred and maybe a video montage posted on your company wall? Most of all, as Rachel points out, B2B marketers need to be able to take quick action when opportunity presents itself. For example, newsjacking is a hot way of capitalizing on the news of the day as a leading Eastern US sports club has demonstrated by making it a cornerstone of its overall marketing strategy by poking fun at celebrities and high-profile politicians.

Derek Handova's Social Media Review: Cartoons such as Dilbert and others have long lampooned the mindless clatter that is "corporate speak." Photo credit: ☼zlady / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Not using any of the words (from the “Weird Al” video “Mission Statement”) To wrap up the post, Rachel delves into “Weird Al’s” final Mandatory Fun video, “Mission Statement,” to emphasize some overused words in corporate speak.

While she does not pick out specific words from the video, Yankovic leaves no doubt about his disdain for one word in particular: “synergy.” This video from “Weird Al” is a four-a-half-minute rundown of all the mindless pabulum that overpaid and underperforming beneficiaries of the Peter Principle have conceived over the last 25 years—or since whenever the Dilbert comic strip first appeared to skewer the pompous mental corpulence of American Big Business. (It is no coincidence that “corpulence” and “corporate” both have the same Latin root, corpus).

Other less-than-worthy nominees for most overused and meaningless phrases that “Mission Statement” features include “operationalize,” “monetize” and “core competencies.” The takeaway—I hope that does not qualify as jargon—is to forget the big, vacuous words that customers will see right through and of which they are suspicious. Tell your product story in simple terms by emphasizing what is in it for your customers. For example, how will your product or service make their lives or jobs easier, more lucrative or psychically rewarding? If you can do this, it almost does not matter what else you do to operationalize your marketing solution (irony intended).

To see Rachel’s original piece online, click over to her blog.

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

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Can PR Tips be too obvious? These 8 from CMI could be

Screenshot by Derek Handova. Content Marketing Institute's 8 PR tips are just too obvious to be any help.

Cross-disciplinary marketing efforts can really supercharge your business development and add more ROI to the bottom line. The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) dedicates itself to integrated marketing in order to amplify the content marketing story by promoting it through other channels, such as public relations (PR). As of this writing CMI has been in business under this name for about six years. The modern practice of PR as guru Edward L. Bernays formulated it in his groundbreaking book Crystallizing Public Opinion has been in existence since 1923. So the practice of PR has it on the concept of content marketing by approximately 85 years.

In all that time do you figure that maybe anyone in PR would have thought to compile the eight very basic PR tips that CMI has published in its June 2014 article “8 Ways Public Relations Can Fuel Successful Content Marketing”? I don’t know. But I have been around the PR game long enough to recognize information that is so familiar as to be dumbfounded that anyone would think this was worthy of a special listing. But these are just content marketing guys and PR newbies. So you cannot expect them to get too deep into the long, distinguished and effective history of PR.

Not to belabor the point—but I am probably doing that—the eight PR tips that CMI wants to take unnecessary pride in delivering for your consideration are:

Build a media database

Pull editorial calendar information

Pitch story ideas to relevant media contacts

Identify bylined article and guest post opportunities

Conduct influencer outreach

Consider partnerships

Pursue speaking engagements

Submit your content for industry awards

Build a media database What CMI is telling us is be aware of what publications cover your industry. This sounds like a good place to start. If you operate a trash hauling company, you probably shouldn’t put Better Homes and Gardens on your mailing list. Seems obvious enough. But they don’t want to take any chances. CMI has enough sagaciousness to tell us to create a spreadsheet that includes outlet name, organization, phone, email, social profile links, areas of interest/beat and notes.

I do detect one omission in the list, however. What’s that you query? Hmm, how about the name(s) of the reporter(s). News articles are written by people. You’re only going to get news coverage if you know who the reporters and editors are at your publications. Then they drop the bomb and say you should upload all this information into a customer relationship management (CRM) program. Beside the point that there are not that many B2B industries that have so many publications covering them that they require an automated information storage and retrieval system to keep organized there is also the flawed logic that treats journalists and bloggers like prospective leads that need to be converted.

Journalists are not your customers. Journalists are impartial third parties that stand as gatekeepers between your company and your customers. They serve the invaluable function of adjudicating the merits of your products and market messaging and communicating their accumulated wisdom to their readers (i.e., your customers). Good coverage could make your product. Bad coverage can break your career. I’m conjecturing, but CMI could have meant that you should upload your press contact information into a content management system (CMS). That seems a more appropriate conclusion.

"Derek Handova's Social Media Review": Publications don't keep editorial calendars hidden unlike the secret menu at McDonald's that's beneath the counter until you ask for it. They are usually online near the ad kit. Photo credit: avlxyz / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Pull editorial calendar information Just about every publication—online and offline—will have an editorial calendar outlining in broadbrush strokes what they will be covering and in what time frame, usually over the course of the calendar year. These will often be packaged together with the publication’s advertising kit. The publication will make it easy for you to find this and even recommend to you that you should contact their editorial department with appropriate information to help their reporters prepare the stories they’re planning. CMI seems to think this is a big secret like the hidden menu at McDonald’s that you have to ask for from behind the counter. Really, there’s no conspiracy. You can find the editorial calendar right online such as for Chief Executive.

"Derek Handova's Social Media Review": While Dean Martin was happy to be hit with the moon in his eye like a big pizza pie, being slapped upside the head with CMI's super-self-evident PR tips such as the deep "pitch relevant story ideas to relevant media" may not be your thing. Photo credit: Foter / Public domain

Pitch story ideas to relevant media contacts In reality, this third tip sounds like tip 1B. Know the relevant publications that cover your industry. Pitch relevant story ideas to the relevant media. Again, nothing like letting something the size of the moon hit you smack in the face like a big pizza pie, but unlike Dean Martin, you may not think that’s amore. Super extra special hint from CMI: look for keyword synonyms in your pitch and in the content the publication covers. For example, Maggots Weekly may be a good match for your white paper on “Larva Control in 5 Easy Steps.” Nice advice.

Identify bylined article and guest post opportunities Never ones to let stones go unturned, CMI tells us to pitch contributed articles in the names of our executives and marketers. This tip is not quite as obvious as some of the others we’ve covered thus far. And it does require a bit of creative thinking to examine what has been covered in your target publication of choice in the here and now and what seams of coverage have been undone that you can sew up with an adjunct piece or perhaps even a rebuttal.

Conduct influencer outreach This particular tip is a bit murky. CMI could mean reaching out to analysts regarding your content marketing. An incomplete on this one.

Consider partnerships This time CMI’s tip is not even in the PR sphere. Getting your content in the emails, web sites and webinars of trade associations would be considered an in-kind trade promotion at best and sponsorship (read: advertising) at worst—not that there’s anything wrong with that! It’s just not PR. Publicity is the act of getting your message through the media for no charge. Pay for play is not that.

Pursue speaking engagements CMI has a good tip here in booking speaking engagements for corporate leaders. This is a great way to get some ink for your company. However, it takes very enlightened leadership to be able to make this an effective strategy for PR—at least for keynotes and other solo speaking slots. I have found that company execs and subject matter experts are much more amenable to panel sessions where they are not burdened with carrying the entire load and the structure is more free form and often aided by a facilitator or host. And if you are lucky, you can take the prepared speaking notes or a transcript of the panel session so as to be able to repurpose the content into something else like a contributed article or a blog entry.

Submit your content for industry awards Sorry, CMI this last tip is a real clunker and a bit self-serving—you run the Content Marketing Awards—but at least you tried to sneak a call to action in there. Just a bit ham-fisted. But truly, no PR department that is actively doing its job has time for such frivolous pursuits like applying for industry awards. And if they were going to apply for awards, they would probably go for a pure PR award like the Gold Anvil. Only if you are 100 percent in the content marketing agency field should you consider this. Otherwise, your CMO is going to take a dim view of your next weekly report.

"Derek Handova's Social Media Review": Any public relations intern worth her weight in column-inches could figure out half of CMI's PR tips in her sleep. Photo credit: Niuton may / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Leave PR to the publicity professionals While well intentioned, CMI’s “8 Ways Public Relations Can Fuel Successful Content Marketing” is just too obvious to be helpful for any serious PR campaign. Any PR student intern worth her weight in column-inches should be able to come up with at least half of these tips in her sleep. Content marketers should stick to content marketing. Leave public relations to the publicity professionals. If you have ghosts, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! If you need PR, click the Public Relations Society of America for a good agency referral. Division of labor is what makes modern life possible. No one can be knowledgeable of everything, much less good at everything.

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

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All over the map with Citrix’s Backward-looking Content Marketing and Consultative Selling Info

Screenshot by Derek Handova. The Citrix white paper "Best Practices for Content Marketers and Salespeople in the Social Era" advises an informational, consultative subject matter expert approach to marketing and sales to combat customer wariness of hard sell tactics. 

Citrix is a big successful virtualization software company. And now they are pushing their Citrix Online subsidiary’s GoToWebinar online seminar hosting platform as a marketing solution. In that effort, they have enlisted top-of-the-line social marketing “experts.” However, some of the advice, tips and best practices these experts recommend border on the chauvinistic norms of the “Mad Men” era of three-martini-lunch marketing and not the 21stst century social solutions they claim to espouse.

In any event, their white paper/solutions brief “Best Practices for Content Marketers and Salespeople in the Social Era” covers a lot of ground and offers some valid points if you can get around the “been there done that attitude” of the authors.

The real problem with this white paper is trying to do too much at once. The very title offers a clue to this issue. A white paper designed to serve the needs of two distinct audiences—even ones that have adjacent interests such as Sales and Marketing—is not going to be able to service both well and more than likely will serve neither adequately. What follows are the relevant sections of the white paper, discussion of the contents and critique.

Sales funnel shift Customers now do the majority of their product research before you ever get in contact with them. In the old days, cold calls and unsolicited commercial messages could generate enough leads to justify their existence. Now customers avoid them like the plague. I know I do. I gave Citrix my Microsoft Lync phone number instead of my real number in order to download this white paper. They can call all they want; I’ll never answer and there is no voice mail.

Citrix says the answer to this dilemma is content marketing. The customers will read your content marketing as researching consumers are wont to do. This will prep them, and you can deliver better warm leads to your sales department.

As seen on "Derek Handova's Social Media Review," Citrix takes the position that consultative selling has emerged as a de rigueur approach if company representatives are to become part of the solution to their customers' hard-sell wariness. Photo credit: bpedro / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Consultative selling a new concept? Next, Citrix makes the proposition that consultative selling is a new concept, but that seems a bit far-fetched. I believe that sales people have been talking about a consultative approach to sales for at least the last 15 years. This would put it at the beginning of Citrix’s time frame. But I guess it’s not a stretch to suppose that it is going to take several years for such a transition to occur across a broad enough swath of the selling landscape.

Rise of the objective salesperson Then there is the revolutionary idea that a salesperson will be objective and recognize if a prospective customer is not a good fit for her company’s product lineup. Citrix says that she should refer this prospect to another company that will be able to fulfill the customer’s needs. Sounds like the Progressive Direct Comparison Tool with which Flo works.

According to "Derek Handova's Social Media Review," the consultative salesperson will focus on the right sale and not be afraid to recommend others for the non-right sale, just like Progressive's Flo shows the best insurance deal, even if it is with a competitor. Photo credit: anyjazz65 / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Me-thinks you think too much! An acknowledgement does escape from Citrix’s position in saying that thought leadership is not a new concept. The way Citrix sees it, there have always been thought leaders in every niche. Some have authored articles or other expertise-setting pieces. Or knowing how things work, these pieces could have been ghostwritten by others, but the point is that the salesperson’s name is on the byline and she gets credit for it.

Your customers know more than ever This might be news to some if they have been on vacation for seven years or more, but social media has become a dominant force in the marketplace. And your customers are using it to talk among themselves, exchanging information and forming opinions. If you are not out there talking to them, they will fill the vacuum of your absence of presence and it may not be complimentary to your company’s sales and marketing objectives.

Via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook they lie in wait. The best way to approach them is with content marketing designed to inform and entertain them. Properly armed, your salesperson can effectively engage these pre-educated customers. Citrix suggests that your salespeople can join groups on LinkedIn or Facebook to meet and greet these prospects and distribute your content marketing. The only danger here, at least in the case of LinkedIn, is becoming overextended with groups. Your salesperson must pick and choose her groups wisely and watch and wait patiently for the opportune time to engage.

Cultivation is the name of the game. This requires a laser focus and not a shotgun approach to business development. And on LinkedIn, she must not resort to anything that even remotely resembles self-serving spammy comments. The best way to build a consultative selling profile is to let the customer come to you in search of your established expertise. After they come to her, collect their information and warm them up for a lead and do not dump into the cold call list.

The content marketing toolbox For content marketing to succeed, a marketer or salesperson must have a complete complement of tools at her disposal. In addition to collateral pieces, Citrix says that she will need webinars, recorded webcasts, videos, case studies, infographics, blah, blah, blah. I believe Citrix thinks that by calling several versions of the same thing by different names, they can pad out their list of implements. This is not to say that they are not valid tools, but let’s be a little more succinct, huh, fellas! However, they are right in that you will constantly need to feed the beast of social media, so all these different types of content will be called into action.

I think the overemphasis on webcasts, webinars, etc. plays into Citrix’s online meeting platform GoToWebinar. Citrix claims that GoToWebinar is the perfect venue for customers to interact with your consultative selling expert and get all your content marketing sorted out with her by their sides. Citrix says this is a low-pressure environment. But whether it was GoToWebinar or Cisco WebEx or ON24 or a hosted event on an in-house platform, I’ve experienced some very Over-the-Top (OTT) hard-selling techniques with the pure content marketing being interrupted with completely spammy self-serving “look-at-me” statements. One of my former marketing directors used to call this chest pounding.

One of the worst recent perpetrators of this type of online marketing misbehavior has been George Washington University. On their webinar for prospective students looking for more information about their online-based master of strategic public relations, they frontloaded all the sales info before ever getting to the carrot of the presentation. I think I sat through about 20 minutes of this before disconnecting. I should have known better. GWU is not known as a leading academic institution and only as a place to fill out your Rolodex of contacts when it comes time to get in with the political power structure of Washington, D.C. I wonder what our first president would think of his namesake center of higher learning?

On the barricades of sales For all the revolutionary action taking place with content marketing and social media, there are still a lot of obstacles facing the modern consultative selling expert, according to Citrix. Chief among these are:

Attention and signal vs. noise—your marketing must rise to the “top of mind”

Differentiation from online competition—large competitors like Google and Apple are crowding their niches leaving only 10 to 30 percent market share for everyone else (combat this with a 15-20 word elevator pitch that includes your unique selling proposition to win the right business for your company)

Quickly adapting opponents—if you’re not doing content marketing and consultative selling you can be sure that your enemies are

Employees slow on the uptake—your personnel need to keep up with the fast-moving changes in social media prospecting, content marketing and consultative sales—this means you must dedicate time for them to read blog posts, attend webinars and brainstorm together monthly

Lack of real people skills—a successful consultative salesperson will not just be an order taker but an order maker, by asking questions of the customer and getting “real” with her—but I have to wonder what Citrix is saying when they recommend flattering your customer: “Buyers are people, too, and like anyone else, can be vulnerable to the personal touch, flattery and humor.” Huh? Shallow flattery is for con men and sycophants!

Unless you’re Amazon, a salesforce is still relevant—even if you’re pure e-commerce—marketing cannot do everything to drag in customers; a real person must still close the sale, even if it’s just a bunch of fresh-faced college grads cold calling your list of warm leads

Voice of experience For the solutions and best practices section of this document, Citrix quotes a bunch of sales experts from the field. This section primarily focuses on LinkedIn as a medium for B2B social sales. To warm up sales leads, contact prospects via social media. Keep messages short and focused on the customer’s needs. Do not get trapped in the feature hype cycle. Just give them a taste of what you have to offer to entice them to respond.

Moreover, this section gives examples of how to establish credibility on LinkedIn by sending personalized messages and using your own and other Groups to contact leads. Be careful to closely observe individual Group rules. Do not sell directly. Establish credibility by participating in discussions, asking questions and being interesting—remember, inform and entertain. And as a reminder, the novelty of social media is still new enough that customers have not become completely wary of it and may still respond to unsolicited input. But always research your customers’ profiles on social media before contact. Only use what’s relevant to the sale and customer’s fears and hopes.

As seen on "Derek Handova's Social Media Review," the Citrix white paper "Best Practices for Content Marketers and Salespeople in the Social Era" never gets down to selling, so you may not be sold. Photo credit: Matt_Lodi / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

A bloated piece with some interesting stuff at the beginning Overall, the Citrix white paper “Best Practices for Content Marketers and Salespeople in the Social Era” is an overstuffed, bloated piece that is okay on the content marketing side. However, it falls short on the social selling section and degenerates into individual anecdotes from some selected experts. While I cannot completely recommend you spend time with this piece, if you do download it, save your effort and read just the first six pages.

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

[derekhandova]

PaperShare’s 6 Killer Content Marketing tips won’t Assault your Social IQ

Screenshot by Derek Handova. PaperShare's six tips for content marketing strategy has a couple of diamonds in the rough among the pedestrian advice.

PaperShare is what it describes itself as the content marketing cloud solution with real-time distribution that delivers leads from content. That’s a lot of buzzwords to cram into one elevator pitch. They’ve probably been reading VentureBeat or TechCrunch to get in good with impressionable young VCs fresh out of Stanford Grad B-school. In any event, this startup issued a set of six tips for content marketing late in 2013. Maybe there are only so many tips for content marketing. Or maybe we’ve all been reading the same B2B collateral. Even so, among the fairly pedestrian tips PaperShare offers there are a few diamonds in the rough. To wit, their six content marketing tips are:

Know What You Want From Your Content

Drive it with Data

Experiment

Engage Your Influencers

Keep it Organized with a Calendar

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

Let’s drill down on these tips and see what we’ve really got. Some stuff you’ve heard before, but some may come as news to you.

Know What You Want From Your Content Actually, knowing what you want from your content in advance of creating it would be an original idea, or at the least something most people are in too much of a hurry to ask themselves while they are frantically scrambling to pull stuff together. PaperShare says whether it’s leads, names, distribution, branding, industry recognition or awareness, deciding the end goal for your content strategy will focus your efforts and also drive its creation. Just like outlining a 12th grade essay before writing it, having a plan for your content marketing will make it easier to whip that stuff out.

Drive it with Data Your content is only as good as the data that backs it up. PaperShare counsels you to measure everything from beginning to end. Start by using keyword search data to see what’s on the minds of your customers and prospects. After that, you need to benchmark your data. Chances are your company is not a monopoly and competes with other firms.

These companies will be facing the same issues as you. They may have published this data. Or they may have created and distributed it “offline.” Ask your customers or prospects if they have any PowerPoint slides from the competition. Some of them may be helpful and supply this resource. Failing that, research analysts will be another good source of confidential information from your competition. With coveted data in hand, you can now guesstimate conversion rate targets for your content marketing.

Experiment The only way to know if what you are doing in your content marketing is working is to test it. We’ve seen this one before, but PaperShare seconds that emotion with their advocacy for A-B testing. To make sure you know what is happening in your A-B test, PaperShare says you should only change one variable of your contenting marketing at a time. That way you’ll know the cause and effect of any differing results from social media. For example, try similar tweets on Twitter but change just the keyword, leaving the other words alone.

Engage Your Influencers Part of engaging your influencers is to offer them valuable content without asking for anything in return. This insight from PaperShare goes to the core of what social media is all about. The content cannot just be valuable, it must be something that is closely guarded and normally gated for highly qualified prospects. Perhaps, this is a sneak peek at some proprietary research you’ve had your analyst firm working up for you. Exclusivity will drive perceived value of the content. As this content slowly leaks out to your influencers’ networks, it will support your overall customer engagement.

Something like engaging influencers needs to function by the 80-20 rule. Give them content 80 percent of the time without asking anything in return. Then 20 percent of the time, you have carte blanche to think you can ask for something in return. PaperShare says you need to ask gently, whatever that means. I think you need to ask politely but if these people owe you in a philosophical sort of way don’t be afraid to call in a favor. If these influencers have been into you for a while, they should be more than happy to help you out the one or two times you ask for it.

Screenshot by Derek Handova. PaperShare tips' impact on content marketing strategy will vary depending on which social network you are using. Photo credit: mkhmarketing / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Of course, how you ask for reciprocation will vary by the social network within which you are operating. The norms and mores of engagement will differ among the major social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other more vertical channels. For example, it is perfectly acceptable to ask for a retweet on Twitter but perhaps a more borderline call on Facebook to ask for “likes.” And on LinkedIn, the norms of professional networking would strongly discourage any direct solicitation for “likes.”

Keep it Organized with a Calendar Here’s another one we’ve heard before: keep an editorial calendar for your content marketing. You do need to have your blog or other social media efforts on a schedule. But I don’t think PaperShare means that you need to blog at exactly the same time every week or even every month. However, you do need to keep your followers hungry and wanting for more. So you should maintain some sort of loose itinerary. In reality, for a blog people expect some amount of irregularity. You might blog three days in a row one week then not utter a peep for the next three weeks. Just don’t let your blog or content marketing gather cobwebs.

For regular social media such as Twitter or LinkedIn, you should be logging in every day to check on things. If you are a B2C company, you should be doing the same with your Facebook account. If there are any substantive comments, forward them to the appropriate department at your company. If there are complaints of a material nature, you’ll need to attend to these immediately.

Don’t Invent the Wheel For god’s sake, stand on the shoulders of the giants who preceded you. After all, Rae Dawn Chong went on a “Quest for Fire” so that you wouldn’t need to figure out how to use a couple of sticks, kindling and understand the concept of friction to produce flames. PaperShare says that if you are on a tight budget and cannot create all the content you need to accomplish your marketing, then you must use a tool—probably the PaperShare cloud solution—to curate content from elsewhere that serves your end purposes.

Share and Share-Alike As we’ve seen previously in social media collateral, some of the best tips will reside within the echo chamber of B2B marketing. Others may catch us offguard, because we might have missed them hiding in plain sight. PaperShare’s “6 Killer Tips for Building your Content Market Strategy” is a little bit of both. Still that shouldn’t stop you from getting one of their killer complimentary customer consultations.

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

[derekhandova]

Most Dangerous Job in Marketing: Firing Dormant Subscribers Hurts but Necessary

Figure1: Bronto Software's "Love 'Em, Leave 'Em & Move on" white paper has the best title yet for a B2B digital marketing white paper and mostly delivers the loving. Screenshot by Derek Handova

As soon as I saw the title of Bronto Software’s white paper on email marketing engagement, I had to smile broadly. There’s something about “Love ‘Em, Leave ‘Em & Move on” that struck a nerve. Maybe funny bone is a better way of framing it. Frankly, it’s the best title I’ve ever seen in a B2B white paper. But beyond the attention-grabbing headline, there lay brutally honest steps to try to salvage the “relationship” with your email customer, failing that a way to say goodbye gracefully and getting ready to cultivate the next set of customers.

Figure 2: When you first engage with an email subscriber there's an adrenaline rush that makes you want to run in fields of gold. But is it a love that will last or simple infatuation? Photo credit: Micah Camara / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

When you’re looking to gain a new email customer, there’s an initial rush of excitement when it actually happens. However she has happened to land on your web site and registered all her details for your regular mail campaign and special one-off offers, it got your adrenaline pumping and pulse racing. But something has happened since then. The ardor has cooled. She’s tailed off clicking through. Some of your emails even go unopened. Face it; she’s just not that into you anymore! Don’t despair, though. Bronto has a strategy for your direct marketing effort to give it one last college try by:

Figuring out why email subscribers loved you at the beginning and renewing that love

Failing renewal of love giving them an ultimatum and some time to comply

Forgetting spurned love, forging ahead and cutting former email flames from your database

Figure 3: Bronto Software's "Love 'Em, Leave 'Em & Move on" email white paper boils down to sending messages that customers/lovers want to read. Photo credit: planeta / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) 

Loving Them To begin with, Bronto says you need to know how you came together at the start. Has this happened to you before? Are you repeating past mistakes and self-sabotaging your relationship? She who does not know her own history is doomed to repeat it. According to Bronto, there are generally four conceptual ways how you could’ve “met” your subscribers:

In your neighborhood (i.e., your web site)

Through a friend of a friend (i.e., social networking)

Speed dating (e.g., sweepstakes enticement)

At the club (i.e., in-store/Point-of-Sale signup)

Each of these relationship origins has its own dynamics and follows a different decay rate. Meeting subscribers in your neighborhood is the basis of a strong relationship as she made the first move to come onto you. Meeting subscribers through social networking is more of a second chance where her friend saw something in you, and she chose to take a look herself and after experiencing off-the-bat chemistry  later decided that it was only infatuation. Whereas subscribers who only joined your mailing list because of a spiff like a sweepstakes could just be players out to get what they can from you—wham, bam, thank you ma’am! And as at a real club where you've collected your fair share of 555 prefix numbers, subscribers that sign up for your mailing list at the store cashier could’ve given out a bogus address.

Figure 4: According to Bronto, each different type of email relationship has a different decay rate based on its acquisition technique. Screenshot by Derek Handova

Figure 4 shows Bronto’s example relationship decay rates for each meeting type. You can combat email marketing relationship decay rates by:

*   After determining that there is a subscriber relationship problem, trying to subtly fix it by schmoozing the divas via steps such as,

Using banner ads in emails to coax profile updating for a special offer

Validating them by confirmation of their updates

Doing the unexpected in your subject lines such as employing emoticons

Adding an extra-added bonus on top of a substantial discount like free shipping

*   Talking it out by,

Making an emotional statement including, “We miss you,” “Haven’t seen you lately,” “Did we do something wrong?”

Offering expert advice in the your company’s field

Improving her user experience

Binding the customer with standing loyalty programs, lifetime gratis shipments and bonding her to your community base

Leaving Them If none of the foregoing tactics has made things better with your subscriber and rekindled her love, you need to escalate things. Send her an ultimatum! But give her some time. Don’t tell her precisely how much time or that you will take her back in a heartbeat. You may be a fool in love, but you’re no schmuck! However, you must be ready for the potential blowback on this “my way or the highway” tactic and be prepared to kiss your subscriber goodbye!

Lay it on the line. Tell her you are tired of all her foolish games and to stop wasting all your precious time. Is she in, or is she out? The truth will do just fine. If she doesn’t respond to your future email communications, you’re through. No more sappy sentimentality. Just straightforward emotional blackmail. She’s a woman; she’ll understand this approach.

In any event, your next—and perhaps final—email to your erstwhile love interest should contain an explicit Call-to-Action link cajoling her to confirm her interest in continuing to receive emails. Failure to click will lead to termination. You may want to make an offer of a discount or another value-add for relationships based in your neighborhood or on friends of friends—the players and clubbers just aren’t worth it, really—as one last lifeline to her.

Moving On Cut bait or go fish. Even as you have culled your neglectful email subscribers out of your contact database’s life, you can still profit from this exercise. Segment these former subscribers based on their demographics, point of entry and interaction history. Once you have a profile of your exes, you will be better able to judge future Ms Perfects. Maybe there is a way to anticipate trouble earlier in your relationships and head it off. But best of all you’ll know a femme fatale at first sight now. If any of these ingénues darken your doorstep in the days to come, you’ll know to run and not walk away from them. And while you are at it, ban your ex-subscribers from re-engaging with your email list. Who needs ‘em?! Don’t think you are alone in this. Bronto can help you automate your email marketing relationships. If only they could do this for our real relationships.

Analogy run amok but in the Running As much as I like Bronto’s headline and overall content of “Love ‘Em, Leave ‘Em & Move on,” it’s a bit too cute—by half. The relationship analogy is just too laborious, and I felt myself rolling my eyes like Mitchell Pritchett on “Modern Family” and lowly groaning at the bad puns, some of which may not be intentional.

Nonetheless, Bronto offers an entertaining take and some useful insights on email marketing relationship sustainment. It’s somewhat top-heavy on the “love ‘em” advice and tails off “leaving ‘em” & “moving on.” But that’s only right as you should be trying to salvage your relationship with your email subscribers and only spurning them if all else fails.

I’d recommend this white paper primarily for B2C marketers, but if you’re a high-volume B2B purveyor, you may also find interesting information within. See the whole piece for yourself (registration required).

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

[derekhandova]

All the News That’s Fit to Search: 10 Steps to Press Release SEO

The BusinessWire press release SEO guide for 2014 provides relevant, up-to-date advice for digital marketers. Screenshot by Derek Handova

Some people are aware of it, but I’m of the opinion that by and large most people do not know that Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway owns BusinessWire, one of the two members of the press release duopoly along with PRNewswire, though there is a set of bit players, but they are inconsequential. We’ll get back to this point later.

For 2014, BusinessWire put together “A Guide to Press Release Optimization: 10 Tips to Optimize Press Releases for Search Engines.” BusinessWire is of the opinion that the classic days of inserting keywords in strategic places in your press release and using unnatural links are over. Natural writing and natural links are in for 2014 with all the changes in the Google search algorithm. Therefore, the wire service felt it was time to update the industry on how best to draft press releases in the constantly changing landscape of online media. They boiled down all their advice into 10 tips, which are:

Research and Learn Real Time User Behavior

Make Friends with the Algorithms

Make Format Improvements

Use Natural Links

Press Release Keywords

Focus on Quality Content

Always Include Multimedia

Use Social Media Strategically

Use Responsive Design for Mobile

Choose the Proper Distribution Method

Research and Learn Real Time User Behavior Ever since the introduction in 2009 of Autocomplete, the Google search page has been able to show the most relevant phrase trends as you type into the search field. So before you write your press release, BusinessWire says you should consult the phrases related to the keywords of your release. I think this is a good practice to see what keywords may be matches for your communications needs. There is a potential problem in trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole with this technique. If a trending search phrase is a natural fit for your release use it. But the temptation to go to a bridge too far may be hard to resist. And if you are signed into any Google services, the Autocomplete results will be biased toward you personally. So use your secondary browser and don’t sign in. This sounds like a recipe for disaster as who can remember to take these kinds of conscious steps.

Makes Friends with the Algorithms With its origin in the original search algorithm PageRank, Google has continuously evolved its formula for creating the hierarchy of search results to stay one step ahead of Internet manipulators. Now that raw number of links and keyword “stuffing” has become passé, Google takes into account other Internet signals such as irrelevant incoming link disavowal, poor internal Web site page content and structure, social media and longer search terms.

Natural writing will minimize the impact of the first two bad criteria and maximize the return on the second two good criteria. The context of your writing is everything. Just place the keywords where they normally go as if you were writing for humans instead of computers.

Make Format Improvements Many press release writers fail to realize that only the first 70 characters of a headline appear in a page of search results on Google. Yahoo! is a little more forgiving, but there are still only a certain number of characters supported. BusinessWire wants you to know these things because they are your only chance to make a first impression. But you still need to observe the touchstone of journalism: the five W’s and an H (i.e., who, what, where, when, why, how). In addition, to grab human attention make a provocative point. Above all, keep your focus sharp. No serf can serve two masters.

Use Natural Links Many marketers are still finding it hard to break away from creating as many hyperlinks from their press releases to barely relevant web pages. BusinessWire correctly says that you need to concentrate on quality over quantity in hyperlinks. Google or other search engines will not think a hyperlink is relevant if it goes unclicked. Find a handful of high quality links to use in your press release. It will allow readers to make decisive choices about where to exit your release rather than “bounce,” which will negatively impact PR SEO. For example, this is the same problem in picking a brand of detergent at the supermarket. With so many choices, customers may not make a choice at all.

Press Release Keywords One and two keyword searches are in rapid decline, BusinessWire says. Three and four word complex search queries are on the rise, and Google takes on the role of the Oracle of Delphi, telling people the answers to their lives, but much less cryptically: “Will Flight 457 on XYZ Airlines be delayed out of LAX?” It’s great that Google will know this answer.

For press release SEO, you must decide if you have a broad or a narrow audience. A "short tail" word search will generate general, broad search results. A "long tail" search gives more specific, narrow results. If your company or client’s product has a small audience, the long tail search approach is the best alternative. However, be mindful that keywords still need to be relevant and in context. BusinessWire says that the first keyword combination is noticed by Google, the second time it’s looking for relevance but the third time it may ding your search ranking. In short, keyword density is out.

Focus on Quality Content Second as a great catchphrase only to “cash is king” is “content is king.” As they used to say of President Reagan in “let Ronnie be Ronnie,” so should you let your press release fulfill its intended purpose. Let it tell a forceful story in the journalistic tradition. Let journalism be your guide for good press release writing and it will also serve the search gods of Google. If readers find your content compelling, their actions will be reflected by Google results and be ranked accordingly. And above all else, keep in mind the journalists who can and will use your press release content if it is written well and tells a credible story.

BusinessWire is referring to the News Pyramid when they say PR SEO depends heavily on above the newspaper fold information. Photo credit: gingerpig2000 / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

BusinessWire brings up an interesting aspect of press release writing without actually calling it out by name: the news pyramid. The most important information in a news story appears at the top, the point of the pyramid, and decreasingly less important information appears lower down. BusinessWire calls this "above-the-fold" content, as in newspapers where lead stories and pictures show up to maximize reader attention. Search engines will read and rank this data the same way a reader scans a newspaper looking for factoids of interest.

BusinessWire takes the opportunity to say here press releases should contain a Call to Action to drive traffic to a subscription page or product specifier, for example. On this point, BusinessWire seems to be backsliding.

Multimedia, Social Media, Mobile and Press Release Distribution A picture is worth a thousand words, relates BusinessWire. This is an old saying, and on the face of it still relevant. Use a picture with your press release if it’s directly related.

To keep abreast of comments that can affect your press release you must monitor social media regularly and keep a listening post open. Social media takes time. Don’t expect quick results from social media. It will build upon itself.

The world is going mobile. If your press release is not optimized for mobile devices, it will be ranked lower than other equivalent press releases that are. Many Internet platforms already support mobile optimized versions of web pages. Look for vendors providing these capabilities.

And last but not least, the press release platform you send your news over is very relevant to how Google ranks it. BusinessWire is of course ranked very highly by Google. I’m sure PRNewswire is as well, but they don’t mention that. What they’re really getting at is the various low cost or even free press release services on the Web. They will not yield significant search results.

Bottom Line The bottom line on the BusinessWire press release SEO guide is very good. I think you will find this a useful read. It's a tad long, but if you practice keyword scanning of the subheads, callouts and graphics you can minimize your content intake time and maximize your comprehension. You can find out more at BusinessWire.

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

[derekhandova]

Not Dead Yet: 10 Best Email Marketing Tactics

For all the tumult and froth surrounding social media, email marketing remains vital to corporate B2B objectives. Screenshot by Derek Handova

For all the tumult and froth surrounding social media and content marketing, old reliable email marketing remains vital and productive. This channel is not dead yet and shows no sign that it will go supernova anytime soon. Earlier this week, the social media and content marketing web site the Hub in conjunction with email solutions provider Madison Logic got the point home with their reference-worthy infographic “Infographic: 10 best email marketing practices.” You may want to print and laminate this one for at-a-glance consultation when you’re getting ready to push the send button on your next email blast. Their 10 best email marketing practices include

Initial caps in subject lines

User first names in salutations

Ultra short word counts

Clear, non-jargon language

Unusual, interrogatory CTAs

Prismatic presentation

Test, retest, re-retest

Mobile friendliness

Initial Caps in Subject Lines As you may know as the savvy digital marketer that you are, the subject line of your email marketing might be your only chance to address the customer. In order to garner the most attention, Hub and Madison Logic recommend that you use initial caps on each word in the subject line. I would mention that the only exception to this guideline would be for short words that are not customarily capitalized such as articles (i.e., “a,” “an,” “the”), prepositions and some verbs. The eye of the reader will be drawn naturally to the first letter of each word and the message will be assimilated much quicker. (There was one other tip against using punctuation in subject lines, but who would ever do that?)

Other takeaways for email marketing best practices include telling what's inside—worst is SELLING what's inside. Photo credit: MikeSchinkel / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

User First Names in Salutations If you are capable of running a merge “letter” on your email from your contact database, this tip makes excellent sense. Of course, the contact database should be quality checked to see that the first name field actually contains a first name and not some other data. For example, in the past, I’ve signed up for free magazine subscriptions under the alias “Current Resident.” I was actually quite shocked when six to 12 weeks later I began receiving “Field & Steam” to the order of “Current Resident.” Apparently, no quality check going on with those anglers. Must’ve had the “Gone Fishin’ ” sign out the day my sub card arrived.

And for heaven’s sake, DO NOT address your direct email as “Dear Customer” or other words to that effect. The customer will definitely know your piece is sloppy work from the get-go and not even consider the offer.

Ultra Short Word Counts Keep the word count to a minimum—actually, the character count—in the subject line, counsels Hub/Madison Logic. If your offer is compelling and can stand on its own, that may be a good tip. If you are emailing a monthly newsletter or something else with comprehensive content, other sources say to call out multiple topics in the subject line. If you are in regular contact with the email recipient, she will have a store of goodwill for your offers and read past the first one if it is not of interest. I would only put a maximum of three offers in one subject line. And you need to test how these subject lines look on different email clients, such as Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and even AOL, believe it or not. But you have the email database right there in front of you. Look and see which domains are popular with your clientele.

Clear, Non-Jargon Language Give people a break and ditch the industry jargon. No DDOS, IP/MPLS, CCNSA, etc. And don’t use salesy language either. Unless you have just bought/rented a new mailing list, the recipients should give you the benefit of the doubt. Give them the benefit of not insulting their intelligence with some over the top, clichéd message.

Unusual, Interrogatory CTAs Get your freak on and get creative with your Calls to Action (CTAs)! Hub/Madison Logic tell us that questions statistically have a better clickthrough rate compared to all other CTA alternatives. I think we can all understand the human condition in this situation. Who can resist finding out the answer to “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” or “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” Just like Pandora—no, not that one—we’re going to open that box.

Prismatic Presentation Hub/Madison Logic fall back on the color schemes hardwired into the reptilian parts of our brains. The bright emergency colors of red and orange will provoke a biological response in the reader and make her more likely to push the “click me” button on the CTA of your email. Conversely, cool colors blue and green will probably lead to a less than optimal response rate.

Test, Retest, Re-retest This concept can never be emphasized enough: do split runs of your email blasts with A/B testing to check which subject lines are working and which are not. But you have to use a large enough sample size to draw any statistically significant conclusions. But don’t test just once. A continuing battery of tests should be done to constantly improve. As pioneering American merchant John Wanamaker purportedly once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”

Mobile Friendliness The future is inexorable, and it’s already here. Your email must be capable of being read on mobile devices. This is really an extension of knowing how your emails look on the customers’ email clients. She is not going to pan and scan around her smartphone to read your epistle. And it may even build ill will. Better yet, give readers the option to receive just plain text emails on their cell phones.

Check it, it’s in the Mail So a very interesting piece of marketing content. The Hub puts out a lot of material. Some of it derivative, but some quite good. This is one of the latter. But make up your own mind—see it for yourself.

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

[derekhandova]

Just the Facts Ma’am: NetLine Wastes no Time Improving your Content

NetLine's "10 Ways to Instantly Improve your Content Marketing Efforts" white paper offers solid if not earth shattering B2B advice. Screenshot by Derek Handova

Whether you have been around the block more than once or are just taking your first baby steps as a marketer, you can appreciate it when a piece of collateral wastes no time getting to the point. NetLine in its short white paper “10 Ways to Instantly Improve your Content Marketing Efforts” does just that. You will find clear actionable directions on how to improve your content's effectiveness with this easy-to-read white paper. NetLine directly takes by the tusks the white elephant everybody else in the marketing room is stepping around: everyone is doing content marketing, but not everyone is doing it well.

These guys put their money where their marketing is. They tell us what we all know in our hearts but only utter in hushed tones if at all: customers run from hard selling techniques as if they are on fire. Customers so eschew engaging with salespeople that they will complete up to 70 percent of the sales cycle before ever contacting your company—a stat they cite from the CEB Marketing Leadership Council. Your customers and prospects are out there all on their own gathering information. And inasmuch as the infamous American criminal Willie Sutton apocryphally answered in reply to the question “Why do you rob banks?” by saying “That’s where the money is,” so you too as a marketer must go where your customers are going for their information-gathering needs.

To counter the non-contact purchasing cycle trend, current best practice insists on a robust content marketing strategy. Helping you with this strategy is NetLine with their 10 ways to instantly improve content marketing. These tips are:

Understand your customer

Be authentic

Tell personal stories

Go the extra mile

Create a strategy

Maintain a content editorial calendar

Write naturally

Focus on one point

Use strong headlines

Make your content easy to read

Include a Call-to-Action (this is a bonus tip)

Understand your customer This would be the cardinal rule of marketers everywhere. “What’s in it for me?” is the question all marketers must always ask, putting ourselves in the shoes of the customer when considering a piece of collateral. NetLine is 100 percent correct to list this as the No. 1 way to improve your content marketing. We need to know how to present our products in the context of how do they make the customer happier, healthier, wealthier and/or wiser.

Be authentic/tell personal stories If the customer catches even a whiff of insincerity, she will head for the exits quicker than a surprise reunion of Spın̈al Tap opening up for Miley Cyrus. Seriously, great content will be authentic and come from the heart, engaging the customer at the emotional level. Your customer will believe it, NetLine advises, as your passion for your subject will shine through. Tell personal anecdotes of the benefits of how your product has improved other customers’ lives. That means you must believe in your product. If you don’t believe in your product, why are you marketing it in the first place?

Go the extra mile When offering consultative selling material to your customers don’t hold back—go all out. Give your customer the keys to the kingdom—she’ll appreciate it in time. Provide your best customer advice out of the box. And no need to dive in with the Call-to-Action immediately. She knows it’s coming. She may be looking for authentic content, but she also knows you have a job to do and that she’ll be marketed to eventually. It’s a lot like dating and knowing when to kiss the girl. She knows it’s coming, but she’s waiting for you to pick the right time.

Create a strategy Of course, as NetLine opines, you need a strategy for your content marketing. And it must jibe with your company and product’s overarching story. I’m not sure about NetLine’s idea of a content marketing mission statement. Corporate mission statements have been suspect since the 1990s, even spawning a spate of parody online mission statement generators and have been continuing fodder for the “Dilbert” comic strip.

Maintain an editorial calendar This is a noble goal, but notoriously hard to maintain after the initial burst of content marketing hype inside your company. But you should try. Probably best to have general goals for content issues to air months in advance but be ready to adapt as the news cycle can bring unforeseen opportunities ala the Edward Snowden/NSA scandal.

Write naturally Use simple words and write conversationally. Don’t use a five-dollar word, when a 50-cent word will do. And act as if you are trying to explain your product to your grandmother. If she can get what you are saying, you’re in business.

Focus on one point I’ve often had a rule I always express to product managers and product marketing managers: one topic per collateral piece. In an essay, you can only have one thesis statement. In a white paper, you can only have one value proposition. NetLine focuses like a laser on this one.

Use strong headlines/make your content easy to read An often overlooked consideration, headlines are the marketer’s ace in the hole. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve received a marketing draft from subject matter experts sans any kind of headline, even a bad one—not to mention lack of even paragraph returns. As a sometime journalist, I’ve always been aware of the power of black type to draw the reader. If they have time for nothing else, readers will still scan the headlines, subheads and captions to get the gist of the overall article. And don’t forget bullets, callouts and pull quotes. The same principles apply to marketing collateral.

NetLine proves they know what they're saying with a simple boxed solutions graphic at the end of "10 Ways" as an understated Call-to-Action. Screenshot by Derek Handova

Include a Call-to-Action To prove they’re able marketers, NetLine includes a Call-to-Action statement at the end of this collateral piece. They encourage you to syndicate your marketing content to maximize its effect. Then to prove that they eat their own dog food, they don’t throw a hard-sell CTA in at the end. They just leave uncommented upon a boxed graphic straightforwardly explaining their various B2B and multi-channel content marketing solutions. Nice touch, NetLine!

To instantaneously see all of NetLine’s 10 plus 1 content improvement factoids or other interesting content marketing collateral visit them online.

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

[derekhandova]

If It Walks Like a Duck: 4 Differences between PR and Social Media

Meltwater Group's news monitoring/PR blog postulates four disruptions of PR by social media, but they do not matter if PR and social cooperate. Screenshot by Derek Handova

Meltwater Group is one of the dominant news monitoring services out there for online media (traditional print news media is another thing). To help their clients understand their news coverage, they run a blog on the side taking on different aspects of modern public relations practice as well as related phenomena such as social media. In a recent repeat of a post from October 2013, one of their PR bloggers related his ongoing discussions with one of his social media colleagues. He said they often converse on four social media disruptions to PR, which are:

Communication consistency

Target audience

Channel reach

Source credibility

Communications consistency

The challenge that PR people have with social media is the need to let go of the conversation, according to Meltwater. In social media, there is a give and take between the organization and the audience—that’s what makes it social. In public relations, practitioners are used to a one-way street of information. The news release goes out over BusinessWire, PRNewswire or another minor wire service and gets posted more or less automatically to “news sites” hither and yon. Most of these sites allow comments, but really, who comments on press releases? So PR people have a set message and there is very little deviation from it. Even the odd journalism intern assigned to write up a press release as a news digest item does it pretty close to verbatim of the press release.

Social media jockeys play it loose and from the hip. That’s what made the Oreo Cookie tweet during the 2013 Super Bowl blackout so effective, the ability to act in the heat of the moment with something precisely on topic. “Loosen up PR people” seems to be the coded message.

According to "Derek Handova's Social Media Review," Oreo's 2013 Super Bowl blackout ad on Twitter is a great example of instantly on-target B2C social conversation.

Target audience

For public relations campaigns, the target audience is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. PR people know to follow the rainbow to the exact spot where the payoff will be. That is they know which individuals they want to reach (i.e., demographic profile) and research the publications and beat journalists who will give them the best chance of accomplishing their goal. In social media, the practice is to take more of a general approach, choosing a social channel such as Twitter or Pinterest, send the social message directly to the consumer that is in mind via hashtag, etc., with the hope that they will perceive it appropriately and perhaps pass it along to their own followers. It’s more of a multistage approach. And the message is much shorter.

Channel reach

Depending on what the industry your company or client is in, channel reach can be a very effective tool for accurately delivering your news to just those whom you want to see it. Meltwater uses the example of the dandiest new dentist drill coming on the market. It would make no sense and could cause channel confusion to get the story in “People Magazine” if that was somehow possible. And the message credibility with the actual users of the drill—dentists—would suffer concomitantly. What PR people want to do is get their drill into the centerfold of “Driller Daily Diorama” or some similarly narrow vertical trade publication.

On the other hand, social media is an “unlimited” channel, according to Meltwater. I think they are on the right track, but they probably mean social media is an “indefinite” channel. You do not and cannot know how far your message will go on a social channel. Your message could go viral or it could be a dead letter with no clicks, impressions, likes, favorites, etc.

Source credibility

Ever since the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed Freedom of the Press, people have had a natural inclination to trust what they read in newsprint (or in online news sites) as a fair, accurate and impartial presentation of reality. Meltwater seems a little jaded in hedging that conclusion but they say they get the point. All told, consumers give a lot of credence to third-party news. For example, I was nearly convinced the new “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” movie was going to flop because a paper reviewer said the actors were just going through the motions. But lo and behold, the movie set the box office record for an opening weekend in April.

Social media does and will always have the patina of subjectivity to it because your company or your client “owns” the social media channel (i.e., Twitter handle, Facebook page, Pinterest board). Credibility in social channels only comes when the message is amplified by the holy grail of marketing, Word of Mouth, as Meltwater puts it.

According to "Derek Handova's Social Media Review," there's no reason PR and social media cannot coexist as they have overlapping and complementary business functions. Photo credit: renaissancechambara / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Play nice

In the end, Meltwater says there is no reason that PR and social media have to be put asunder never to rejoin. The tools are complementary and PR and social media personnel should work together. After all, the whole of the marketing apparatus is greater than the sum of its constituent parts. Meltwater does a good job exploring these issues and I encourage you to read the complete text of their four differences between PR and social media blog post.

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

[derekhandova]

Duh: AllFacebook’s 3 Media Insights for Publishers so Obvious even J. Jonah Jameson Would Know Them

AllFacebook, the unofficial Facebook blog states the obvious in its three social media insights every publisher needs to know. Screenshot by Derek Handova

It’s a good thing that AllFacebook is only the unofficial blog for Facebook otherwise Mark Zuckerberg would have to fire these guys for being masters of the obvious. Their three media insights for publishers are so obvious, even J. Jonah Jameson, editor of the “The Daily Bugle” in the “Spider-Man” comic books would know these. Actually, the bloggers at AllFacebook did not write last week’s entry that would have had Larry from the “Three Stooges” interjecting “You don’t say?” It was a company called VigLink blogging about three insights that they gathered from their just concluded Publisher Roundtable. Truth be told, they do acknowledge their top three takeaways are obvious. Well, if they are obvious why are they wasting time to tell us about them? Dunno. Makes you wonder about the rest of their decision-making processes though, huh? In any event, VigLink’s three pieces of sage wisdom gathered from their survey of more than 250 publishers with in excess of 30 million unique monthly visitors are:

Facebook drives traffic

Social media is key to retaining an audience

Social media traffic isn’t always quality traffic

I will get into these and try to keep a straight face as I analyze them.

Facebook drives traffic

According to VigLink’s survey, “the most popular and effective social media site” is Facebook. I do not have the up-to-the-minute user figures in front of me, but I doubt there is anyone in the world connected to the Internet that does not realize that Facebook is the largest social media network in the world—by a factor of 10! You do not need to take a survey to get the information that it’s dark at night. As far as being effective goes, that is a possible insight that may not be obvious at first blush. It would all come down to what you mean by “effective.” If you mean you are reaching a targeted demographic of potential customers who are likely to take an action based on your company’s Facebook content, I doubt it.

Any good marketer should know that Facebook will bring in a lot of waste impressions from people who have no interest, except passing interest, in your content much less your company or products. This is especially true for B2B companies. A B2C company would probably have better luck with Facebook, but there’s still going to be much useless interaction. And these useless users could mar your content with inane comments or worse. I saw this once when a logo from the company I worked for went viral on Digg based on its file name containing the suffix “POS.” This was short for “positive” but the social commentators took their discussion into the sewer with the real POSes.

Social media is key to retaining an audience

Social media probably is a useful tool to reach your audience, but if your content is lacking in engagement, it will not matter if you have the longest reach in social media. How many companies do you know that are present on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many other niche social sites and as soon as they slacked off the content generation cobwebs and dust started to gather? Social media is just another channel to reach your target audience. Unlike when communication theorist Marshall McLuhan said in the 1960s “the medium is the message” about television, social media does not have an embedded message. Television viewing is a passive activity nearly subliminal in its hypnotizing power. Social media requires active participation on the part of the user. This activity could be at a very low level such as reflexive retweeting of messages on Twitter, but there is at least some basic communication occurring.

According to "Derek Handova's Social Media Review," many social media users are just killing time on Facebook and Twitter. Photo credit: Ed Yourdon / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Social media traffic isn’t always quality traffic

The publishers in VigLink’s survey expressed their lack of satisfaction of traffic from Facebook (only 41 percent), which was more than double that of Twitter. So much of social media is just that—social. People are in many cases just killing time, especially on Facebook. It’s quite random. This is probably why Facebook has switched from promoting organic posts to driving traffic with paid media.

A mixed approach

There is some underlying truth to AllFacebook/VigLink’s post. They just don’t make a very good point of it. The best practice is one that has been catching on more with content-driven marketing on the three axes of paid, earned and owned social media. Perhaps, VigLink will get around to this in their next survey. Read their complete post here.

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner

[derekhandova]

Don’t be a Tool: Uberflip’s 7 Tips for Content Marketing

Uberflip's 7 tips for content  marketing don't quite fit into the puzzle. Photo credit: ShashiBellamkonda / Foter / CC BY

One of the hottest startups in social media and content marketing applications right now is Uberflip, a Toronto outfit that makes Uberflip Hubs and Uberflip Flipbook. These solutions help content marketers aggregate, curate and make interactive content from most major social media platforms and media formats. To prove their technology, they host a blog on Hub designed to showcase how it aggregates text articles and SlideShare presentations, among others.

In a recent blog entry titled “7 Skills to Have in Your Content Marketing Toolbelt,” the company advises on using a good mix of journalistic, marketing and basic technology skills. I’ve often told the engineers in the companies I’ve worked that the first thing I would have them do if they moved over from R&D into the business side would be to have them take Journalism 101 and Marketing 100 to get a basic grasp on the process of reaching customers. Why do technology companies think engineers can just drop into marketing roles and hit the ground running (rhetorical question)? But I digress. The seven tips for your content marketing toolbelt from Uberflip are:

Knack for Storytelling

A Journalist’s Eye

Basic SEO Knowledge

Ability to Write Concisely

Excellent Grammar

Versatility

Sense of Resilience

Knack for Storytelling As a creative writer, I totally agree with Uberflip about the difference between traditional marketing and content marketing being all in the context. Good content marketing will engage the customer in a narrative. It should make her care about the outcome and allow her to see herself in the place of the protagonist.

A Journalist’s Eye This tip strikes me as one that could come from Hannibal Lecter—not! But seriously, Uberflip is again right on the money here. It’s all about the facts, Jack! Content marketing relies on the credibility of the information it conveys. In this day and age, there is no place for vaporware, as we called it back in the 1990s, or slideware as it was referred to in the early to mid 2000s. It’s almost cliché, but any content marketing for your company’s wares should answer the 5 W’s and an H questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

Basic SEO Knowledge In principle, I agree with Uberflip on content marketing requiring a basic knowledge of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but only to a certain extent. Keywords and metatags are all well and good, but strategic positioning of them will not make up the difference for lame material. Just because web surfers can find your content doesn’t mean they are going be convinced by it. Remember the old marketing axiom: good content will survive bad formatting but good formatting cannot save bad content.

Ability to Write Concisely I don’t quite get Uberflip’s two opening examples for this tip. The blog cites Snapchat, a texting application with disappearing messages, and Vine, the short video service on Twitter, as examples of concise writing. Huh? They’re both brief mediums, but the first is barely a form of writing whereas the second is all audiovisual. A basic tool of concise writing is not even mentioned by Uberflip: bullet points. What writing could be more concise?

Excellent Grammar This one is a natch. If you cannot construct a basic sentence without making numerous grammatical mistakes, why would anyone trust the reliability of your information? Hmm, Uberflip says you can practice your grammar. Profound.

Versatility I’ve seen this tip elsewhere: use multiple social mediums to broadcast your content and repurpose your content across multiple mediums. Turn a video into a transcript. Turn a case study into a slide presentation. Mix and match. It’s a good substitute in the short run if you have a dearth of material.

Sense of Resilience Social media is a fast-changing and faddish industry. What’s hot today will be not tomorrow. Don’t get complacent. Be ready to follow your customers to whatever platform is en vogue.

Throw the Book at ‘Em Uberflip might have mojo in the market right now, but these tips are pedestrian and not all that original. The company does have a nice Call-to-Action at the end to download its eBook templates. At least they got that right. For the complete story, read Uberflip’s blog entry “7 Skills to Have In Your Content Marketing Toolbelt.”

-Derek Handova Social Media Practitioner