Digital Marketing Blog - Larry Markovitz @larrymarkovitz - Tumblr Blog

Optimizing the Golden Rule > How to Outreach the Right Way

This is a great post on How to Outreach the Right Way. With Panda and Penguin affecting the SEO community it is more important than ever to produce quality content that is unique and that people want. Anthony shares some great stuff on influencer outreach. Check it out when you have a chance. http://www.zazzlemedia.co.uk/blog/optimizing-the-golden-rule/

Alt Text Best Practices - Not To Keyword Stuff

Keyword stuffing of alt text is when you are naming your images on a page and instead of naming what the image really is, you are trying to “stuff” or “add” the keywords that you want that page to rank for in the “alt text.” The thought here is that, if you have more of those keywords on a page, you are telling Google and other search engines what your page is about. The more instances of this keyword used on page, some SEOs believe is better. This is NOT the case.

For example, in the image below.

You can see that there is NO “alt” text. This page http://www.kpmg.com/US/en/topics/data-analytics/Pages/Default.aspx and KPMG is missing out on an opportunity to add an additional keyword on this web page such as "data and analytics consultant drawing a line graph on monitor" which has a TOTAL search frequency of:

data consultant: 22,000 monthly searches data analytics: 246,000 monthly searches analytics consultant: 6,600

TOTAL potential monthly searches: 296,600

Always make sure to add alt text to ALL images describing what is happeining in the image and try and incorporate keywords where possible that make sense and sound natural.

“alt” text is “Bring Speed and Predictability to Your Next Software Implementation.” Looking at this page http://www.sap.com/solutions/rapid-deployment/asset/index.epx?id=5f79af9e-4bca-40be-b3d5-31cc47fa91cb we can see that the Headline or “H1 tag” (Image 1) has “Bring Speed and Predictability to Your Next Software Implementation” in it as well. This is NOT an ideal situation and is considered keyword stuffing. It is also a duplicate of the “alt” text or vice versa. It would better for this image “alt text” to read “Office colleagues smiling and laughing in the office.”

As well, in the example Image 2, the image is too generic to tag the alt text with “Bring Speed and Predictability to Your Next Software Implementation” because there is no software implementation visually going on in the image.

In order to justify integrating the keyword into the alt text, the image has to explicitly represent that keyword. For example, an image of airplanes in the background and office workers looking at a computer screen, can be better defined as alt text “Office colleagues looking at Aerospace and defense software.”

How Can My Business Attract Positive Attention From Local Media?

Give them something to talk about. Make a list of the outstanding aspects of your business or industry - traits that would help a reporter tell a good story. People get press because they are doing something newsworthy or know about an interesting topic.

Target the right writers. Once you’ve figured out your story, search the web for local journalists who have published or written articles related to the topics you want them to discuss. The more targeted your list of writers, the more likely you’ll get a response. Skip out on sending a one-size-fits-all press release to a giant list of journalists.

Think like a collaborator. Figure out ways to be genuinely helpful to journalists, even if it does not bring you immediate rewards. When you pitch, think about how your pitch might entertain or educate readers.

#content marketing #PR #digitalpr #business

4 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR EMAIL OPEN RATE

Did you know that there are around 205 billion emails sent per day? So naturally, email marketing has become a pillar in brands’ marketing strategies. But what does it take to make your brand’s emails stand out amongst the rest in a user’s inbox? Your email open rate (EOR) is a key indicator of how well a campaign is performing. To help make your email marketing campaigns more successful, we’ve come up with four ways for you to improve your email open rates.

1. Drop a (Subject) Line

Your content doesn’t get seen or shared if the email doesn't get opened. Your email subject line is the most important part of your content push and ultimately affects your email open rate. Here at SocialToaster, we work with a variety of clients who are very skilled in the craft of writing the perfect email subject line. We have seen several different subject lines work, (and some that didn’t work). We’ve compiled some best practices below for that eye-catching email subject line:

Brand recognition. Brand awareness is (usually) a top marketing goal so why not include your brand’s name in the subject line? Keep it short. It’s a subject LINE, not a novel. Call-To-Action. Add an active call to action such as win or share. Let users know what they have to do besides ‘open’ the email. Teaser text. Frame the content/email as exclusive. For example, “First Look Just For You!” Users feel like VIPs and it also shows that your content is new and fresh. Phrase as a question. Questions provoke answers. A user's curiosity will always get the best of them.

2. Perfect Timing

We all know that timing is everything, especially when it comes to emails. Sending an email at the wrong time, on the wrong day or even during the wrong time of year can result in low open rates. Are you overwhelmed yet? Fear not, just like there is a craft of the subject line, there is a science to the timing.

As with anything in marketing, timing should be based upon your audience. For example, if you are targeting the 9-5ers, early morning (during their coffee) or late night (during their beer), AKA not the middle of the work day, works best. Timing will be different for stay-at-home moms, yuppies, and other audiences. Bottom-line is that your brand must know your audience's habits.

3. Frequently Frequent

It’s Dating 101: Never come on too strong (ie. Picking out the names of your future children on the first date). The same can be said for an email. The more often you send emails, the more likely it is that users will get tired of your brand and less likely they are to open your emails. Make them miss you...but only just for a little bit.

Less is always more. At SocialToaster, we advise clients to email through our platform 1-2 times per week; anything less keeps your brand out of users’ minds and anything more is overwhelming. Your Unsubscribe Rate is often times just as important as your email open rate. You want to find a happy medium between users getting tired of you and users forgetting you.

4. Be Content With Your Content

No one likes boring! Users aren’t going to open emails that contain content that does nothing for them. Content must be a resource that offers users something of value in return. In this case, we’re talking about the time the recipient invests in reading your message. Whether it is knowledge, tips, or tricks, the content is what users care about on the other side of the subject line.

Content is the bread and butter of your email so make sure it is relevant to your brand and marketing strategy, and compelling to your users. If you consistently deliver valuable content, users will trust you and you will eventually see dollar signs.

Bonus Tips:

Marketing provides a myriad of opportunities to split test. Split test everything from content to subject lines to different times of day. It can be time consuming but the results will save you lots of time and money in the long run. Review your mailing list. There’s nothing worse than the “undeliverable message” popping up in your inbox after sending out an email. So ask yourself before you hit send, how old is this list and can it be updated? Article originally posted on Social Toaster

Article originally published on Social Toaster

#email marketing

A Better Approach to Blogger Relationship Campaigns

Have you ever worked on the blogger outreach component of a social media plan? If so, what’s the first question you get asked?

For me it is usually, where do we find the Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). Brands that want to engage bloggers in social media platforms to help carry the message always want the same bloggers — the one with the most readers, the largest following and the biggest blogger brand in the vertical.

But what if that is the wrong way for your brand to go about things? Let’s face it. If everyone wants the big bloggers to blog about their brand, then you have to either have something really amazing or work really hard to break through the in-box clutter to reach said blogger. Even if you’ve done your homework and you know you have a product, service, or a story that is perfect for that mega-blogger, it’s still really difficult at best. But what if that isn’t the most effective approach for your social media campaign?

Recently I read Dayna Steele’s Rock to the Top. Lots of good little stories and tips in the book but the one that really stuck with me…the one I wrote down on the pad next to my bed was this. For rock bands to get radio play, they need to focus not just on the biggest radio stations but more importantly, they need to focus on who will play their music. Think about that for a minute. It’s a different way to frame the challenge. It’s not about reaching the folks who reach the most consumers. It’s about reaching the folks that are most likely to like and play your music regardless of size of their audience. Now I’m paraphrasing Dayna here so if I got it wrong, blame me not her.

So, take a look at that blogger outreach program you’re developing and ask yourself — are you focusing on size or are you truly looking for who is going to play your music?

If you’re looking for the folks most likely to play your music, how would you go about finding them? More importantly, how would you go about approaching them? Would you do it the same way you do for the big wigs or maybe try another approach?

I’m thinking you’d have to commit a lot more resources to finding those smaller folks. Yes, you’re going to have to go deeper in the Google pages to find those lesser known bloggers who have smaller but possibly more devoted readers. On the flip side though, I think you’ll find you don’t have to work as hard to break through the in-box clutter.

Smaller bloggers aren’t getting media kits and product samples or even brand outreach on a constant basis. They likely want it but they just aren’t there yet in terms of size of following. So if you read their blog and find that they are a good match for your brand, product or service, then a simple email stating you’ve read their stuff and think based on blog post a, b and c that they’d love your brand/product/service and you’d like to send it along for them to check out might just do the trick.

So while you’ll invest more time, effort and money into the research side of the equation, you might just save enough on the outreach side to make it all balance out.

Best of all, because you’re truly focusing on grassroots instead of just the more traditional big bang theory of blogger relations you might just find you’ll get traction faster and with far more authentic blogger support. Support that will bleed over to other channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. And it is funny how some of the big wig bloggers pay attention to lesser known bloggers in their vertical and often pick up ideas from those blogs.

So what say you? In blogger relations does size matter or should you focus more on who’s gonna play your tune?

Article originally published on Converse Digital

#marketing #outreach

How to Write an Effective Outreach Email

In the brief amount of time I’ve spent doing outreach for link building, my approach and strategies have evolved. In my early days, I was over-eager and optimistic, crafting drawn-out messages and patiently waiting for the links to come flooding in. To continue with the theme of classic television sitcoms, I was the Richie Cunningham of link building: wide-eyed, naïve, and mistake-prone. I’d like to think my style has evolved to a worldlier, Fonz-like confidence.

There is a lot of discussion about which link prospecting strategies work, but the outreach email is where the link is won or lost. Even with all the research and personalization in the world, you’ll never convert if you don’t get the communication right.

We’ve created an instructographic with some basic tips to help you craft effective outreach emails and make sure your link building campaign doesn’t jump the shark.

Get a branded email address

Your email address and name are the first potential signs of trust or value the target recipient will see. Link building is really “relationship building,” so it’s important to show the recipient you’re a real person rather than a “Press” or “Web Team” blasting out link requests. If you’re doing outreach for a client, try to get an address with their domain in it—especially if the brand is recognizable.

Conventional wisdom suggests that if you use a sexy lady’s name like “Alexya” or “Francesca,” you’ll get a better response rate. In my experience, this simply isn’t true and, frankly, it makes your message look spammy.

This also means throwing away your Gmail address. If you’ve ever tried to sell anything through Craigslist, you’ll know from experience how wildly spammy an unsolicited message from a Gmail address can look out of context:

Are you going to open a message from this guy? I didn’t think so.

Contact the right person

This might seem like a no-brainer, but the bigger the website or organization, the more difficult it is to target the right person. Get the email to the individual who can most likely execute your desired action.

Further, anticipate the level of knowledge or control your target has over the website. If you’re contacting a department webmaster, he or she will know how to correct a broken link but may not have any influence regarding editorial decisions for adding your link. Alternatively, if you’re contacting a marketing executive or the director of an academic department at a college, they might not know a redirect from a server log. Broken link building is one of my favorite techniques, but it will only work if the recipient knows or cares what a broken link is.

Lastly, it’s absolutely essential to personalize the salutation. If you have to send it to a general editor or department, at least put the name of the site or organization in the greeting.

Utilize the subject line

Use an enticing subject line, but don’t try to be sneaky. Bloggers and webmasters are well-accustomed to subject lines like “Question about domain.com,” only to be hit with a poorly executed link request.

I like this advice from SEER’s Ryan O’Connor: use the target’s name in the subject line and form it as a question. It has the potential to look spammy, but it’s a great way to stand out in a sea of unread emails.

Be brief. Be significant.

Keep your emails brisk and specific. My goal for the first email is never to get a link—I just want a response. I want to show the person I’ve done my homework on his or her site and have demonstrated why the content is relevant and valuable. Peter Attia is a big proponent of short and sweet outreach emails.

Matt Gratt wrote a great article on how outreach emails should be personalized, positioned, and persuasive, and he referenced an email from clueless link builder “Linda” that’s shockingly similar to an email Portent received. Here’s ours (sensitive information is redacted with pastel swirls):

I actually appreciated that she pointed the broken links in my blog post, and I would have totally replaced those with a link she suggested… except the links were utterly unrelated to the post’s content. Whoops.

Make it easy for the recipient to understand your desired action. Be clear, but don’t be pushy. Instead of, “Put the link on your page with anchor text ‘inevitable Penguin penalty,’” try “Would you consider including our article in your weekly news roundup?”

The best example of this I’ve seen is from James Piper’s blog post that references a message from Distilled’s Rob “Stenton” Toledo: it’s personal, direct, and encourages conversation. It’s so good that I printed it out and pinned it to my cubicle wall for daily reference.

Use an appropriate signature

The signature must match the tone and intent of your message. If you’re contacting a blogger, you might forgo the including a title and brand logo in the signature for a more casual style. Alternatively, if you’re trying to get the attention of an influencer or company executive, including a title could add trust and authority to your message.

Like the email address, I’d shy away from including anything related to “marketing” or in your signature. If you do include a title, try “outreach coordinator” or “community manager.”

Don’t mention “links.”

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, don’t even mention “links.” Jon Cooper is exactly right: be mindful of the connotations your words carry. It’s better to ask someone to “share” or “include” something in a resource list, or “cite” a page for an article, rather than “link to” a “piece of content.”

Are You More like Richie or the Fonz?

What strategies do you use to get your emails to convert? Which elements do you consider most important for an email to have? Let us know in the comments!

Article originally published on Portent, Inc.

#outreach #email marketing

Blogger Outreach Tools

Below is a list of cool blogger outreach tools that I have stumbled upon. I have tried some of them. This list will continue to grow as I find more of them. Let me know in the comments if there are any that I have missed and should add to my list.

Group High

Founded in 2012 by Andy Theimer and Bill Brennan, GroupHigh has grown to a leading public relations and marketing software provider. Located in Boulder, Colorado, GroupHigh has a growing client base of more than 400 organizations ranging from small marketing and public relations agencies to divisions of large enterprise organizations.GroupHigh offers a software-as-a-service marketing application that allows public relations and marketing teams to build, evaluate, and manage one-to-one-to-many marketing relationships. GroupHigh features robust web and social data empowering marketers with blog and social search, relationship ranking and scoring, and earned post tracking to generate more word of mouth buzz, increase public trust, and empower your biggest advocates.

Check them out at: http://www.grouphigh.com/

Inkybee

Smarter blogger outreach. Your clients look to you for better digital outreach and validation of the results. Raise your game as an agency by using Inkybee's powerful outreach tools. Enjoy a free 14 day trial of Inkybee will allow you to find the influencers you should be reaching out to! There's no contract and you don't need a credit card. Go for it!

Check them out at: http://www.inkybee.com/

#influencer #blogger #outreach #software #saas #technology #marketing #pr

6 Practical and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your New Online Store

Your store launches only once. You want to use the launch as a chance to get as much traffic and attention as you can.

Before you become a seasoned marketer with big sales, there are a number of things that you can do to get traffic to take advantage of a grand opening.

This post is all about getting traffic to your new store by targeting influencers and getting attention. We offer actionable tactics and provide six templates you can copy and paste to use for your campaigns. And at the end we share the most important things you should do as an established business to keep the momentum going.

Now let’s start getting you some traffic.

1. Send free samples to Instagram influencers

Instagram is quickly becoming one of the most effective marketing channels for ecommerce merchants. A recent study found that Instagram gives brands 25% more engagement than any other social platform and our own analysis found that it generates a higher average order valuethan Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

It’s also a great way to drive traffic and awareness for your store – especially if you know how to target influencers.

For the sake of example, let’s say you want to start a company selling hair products online. How do you get attention for your store and products?

Get started by looking through Instagram for the popular accounts that may consider featuring your product to their hundreds of thousands of followers.

How do you find these popular accounts?

By searching through WEBSTA, a site that catalogues the most popular Instagram hashtags and users. By typing in “hairstylist” in the search bar, you get to see both the most popular related hashtags as well as users who have “hairstylist” in their usernames or bios.

You might also check out WEBSTA Hot, which features the most popular hashtags trending now.

It was by searching through WEBSTA that we discovered Steph Brinkerhoff, a professional wedding hair stylist and makeup artist based in Utah. Her Instagram handle is @hairandmakeupbysteph, and she has about 150,000 followers.

Look: In her bio, Steph features a link to her blog, Hair and Makeup by Steph. You can find there all sorts of advice on hairstyles.

And just as importantly, you can find above a link to her “Contact” page. It lists a phone number, email, and a contact form. From there, you can initiate contact.

Another effective way to target Instagram influencers is by using the Instagram app on your phone. You can check the “popular page” which contains photos that are trending and have thousands of likes. Look for photos related to your industry and click over to the user’s profile to see if she has a large audience and a way to get in touch.

For example, here’s how that might look if you sold pet-related products.

Typically if a popular account has contact information - especially an email address – in her bio, it usually means she's open to product placements, partnerships and advertising opportunities.

Now when it comes to reaching out, it’s important to be strategic about this. Not every Instagram user with a lot of followers is willing to feature products from users. We’re certainly not recommending that you target Steph or nala_cat to get your product featured. Instead, this simply describes the journey of the targeting process.

What might a reach-out campaign look like? If a business address can be found on a contact page, send along a sample directly and attach a note to describe the product.

And if there’s no actual address, you might send a note to ask whether the Instagram user might be willing to accept samples. Here’s a template you can use:

Hi Janet,

My name is Lauren, and I’ve been a big fan of your Instagram posts.

You might be interested to know that I’ve recently launched an online store around (the type of product you sell). I’m particularly proud of (the product that you’re sending), and wonder if you might accept if I pass along a sample of it. If you like it as much as I do, perhaps you’ll consider sharing it with your audience?

Please let me know if there’s a business address for me to send a package to, and if you have any questions at all.

Lauren

yoursite.com

2. Reach out to bloggers and press

There are other people you can reach out to: bloggers, vloggers, and press. The size of their audience varies, but some of them have large followings, and the process of reaching out to them is quite similar to reaching out to Instagram influencers.

The best way to find bloggers is simply by looking for them on Google.

On Youtube, you might try out keywords like: “hair advice,” “hair tips,” and “hair care.” Then see whether the makers of the videos post regularly on aspects of writing about hair products.

You may have to play around with your keywords to find the people who may be interested in your product. There are many people who review products on video part-time or for a living.

Another tried and true method for getting traffic is landing your business in the press. Now you might not get covered from very big newspapers and sites, but you have a better chance of getting press from local news sites and community papers. You have a good chance of being featured ifyou can tell a unique story, if you can talk about your product in interesting ways, and if you write a good pitch.

When reaching out to the press, a concise pitch is nearly always better than the long pitch because reporters see lots of pitches. If you’d like to get press attention, write a short and compelling email. Tell them about what makes you different, and try to pitch yourself as a local success story.

Just as it would be with an Instagram personality, getting coverage from a popular blog, from a vlogger, or from the press can drive a lot of sales to your store. Reach out to them just as you would to an Instagram personality to send them a sample and a short note.

What can you write to a blogger or a vlogger? We’ve put together this template to get you started.

Dear Hailey,

My name is Richard and I am a (your info) who also sells (your product). I’m a fan of your blog on (focus of the blog), and especially enjoyed a recent post on (focus of a recent blog post).

I just wanted to let you know that we’ve recently opened an online store to sell (your product). Our products are special for the following reasons (list two or three reasons why they’re special).

I’ve sent a sample of (your product) the address listed on your contact page. If you love it as much as I do, perhaps you’ll consider sharing with your audience? Please let me know if you’re interested in learning anything at all about these. My direct number is: (direct number).

Richard

yoursite.com

And to the press? You can pitch to be featured as a success story. Find the appropriate person at the paper of interest, and send them a note that might go like this:

Dear Mark,

My name is Dana and I am a local resident of (your town). I’ve recently started an online store selling (your product) and I wonder if (the paper) might be interested in this local story.

Not many people are yet selling online from (your town). This is a pretty new thing, and we hope to be big soon. We have an interesting story: (tell the story of your founding or the source of your products in two to three sentences.)

Please let me know if we can tell you anything more about our product and our story. Maybe other local residents can learn a few things about selling online.

Dana

yoursite.com

All of these people have audiences, and getting their attention when you have just launched and are still novel may be your best shot at getting covered.

Note: You don’t have to target the biggest and most successful people. Your chances of getting featured are better for people with smaller audiences, because they’re not constantly swarmed by people who are looking for a feature. In fact, Chris Dammacco, who sells retro video games, has made a conscious decision to target Youtube vloggers with smaller audiences. Keep in mind that the loyalty of the audience matters almost as much as its size.

3. Post your store to reddit

The whole internet hangs out on reddit. In addition to its main page, which aggregates the most popular content, it also has thousands of niches called subreddits. You can find a subreddit on nearly any subject, for example, /r/bicycling, /r/scifi, or /r/corgi.

There are a few threads that you should be paying attention to that may help your business.

First, everybody should be browsing the /r/entrepreneur subreddit. With about 79,000 subscribers, it has lots of interesting tips and discussions on starting a business. You might also be interested in the related/r/smallbusiness thread as another source of general business advice.

Let’s stick with hair products. Well, maybe you want to check out the/r/femalehairadvice thread. There’s a lot of discussion on all aspects of haircare for girls.

Take a look also at related subreddits like /r/haircarescience, /r/curlyhair, or simply /r/hair. As we said, there are a lot of niche subreddits out there.

Make your posts very brief, displaying only the essence of what your new store is about. One example of a headline that you might use could be something like:

Who says that short hair can’t be fancy? My store in Philadelphia makes accessories for guys with really short hair.

Make it snappy, catchy, and not very sales-y. You should also check out the Reddiquette guide to check out whether you’re following reddit guidelines.

Pay attention also to the rules of your subreddit. They’re always found in the sidebar to the right of the subreddit. Some subreddits don’t allow promotional material – so posting what’s basically an ad for your store is not allowed. If you post about your site to a place that doesn’t want it, either you’ll find that no one’s upvoting your link, or in extreme cases you may even get banned from the subreddit. Read the rules.

4. Get friends and family to share

Are you at the age yet when all of your Facebook friends are posting pictures of their babies? Isn’t it annoying?

Many people are sick of looking at baby photos, but you can probably get away with sharing your online store. People don’t launch businesses too frequently, and so it’ll probably be quite novel within your circle of friends to see you start your own business.

Do you know the site Upworthy? Of course you do. Upworthy articles are in everyone’s Facebook feeds. Now did you know that its initial momentum was generated by friends and family. They set a goal of getting 1,000 Facebook fans by the end of the day of their launch date. It worked, and that’s part of what gave them the initial traction to take off.

Reach out in a targeted way to your friends and family. You’ll get away with it without risking irritation. On Facebook, talk about your store in an update.

Are there channels for talking to your extended family? Do they plan reunions on an email list? Send a note, and tell them about your new store.

Don’t focus the ask on getting them to buy your products. You should instead offer them your products for free. They are your friends and family, after all.

Instead, ask them to share the store with their networks. These are people with whom you have social equity, and you won’t ask for these kinds of favors very often. You’ll have a higher rate of success than reaching out to strangers, and if enough of them share, that may give you sufficient momentum to keep a regular stream of customers.

What might that message look like?

Hey everyone,

Craig here. I’m really excited tell you all about a store I built online: (yourstore.com).

It sells (your product), and I’m really excited for it. If anyone’s interested anything I sell, send me a note. I’ll send you a few things for free :D

Would you share and spread the word about it? I’d really like to get some momentum going.

Craig

Add exclamation marks as required.

5. Pro-actively engage on Twitter

You don’t need to start selling products before you engage with people on Twitter. There are a lot of ways to get on peoples’ radars as a cool new store.

Blackbird Baking Company, a bakery in Toronto that sells fresh bread, managed to get over 500 followers before it opened its store in Toronto.

That’s nothing to sneeze at. How did it get a few hundred followers pre-launch?

First, it generated some follow-backs by following select people on Twitter whom it determined may be interested in a new bakery. These include restaurateurs and self-declared bread enthusiasts in Toronto.

One tool that you can use to find relevant users is Followerwonk. Log in through Twitter, and you can search relevant keywords in bios and profiles.

It has also been following a disciplined tweeting strategy. Blackbird has been baking and distributing their breads around interested stores around Toronto, and have been uploading lots of pictures of breads to Instagram and Facebook. The pictures are mouthwatering – and shareable.

It also engaged very pro-actively with people who sent tweets about the local community. These topics included life in Toronto, great food there, and, of course, bread.

It has finally tweeted often about when the store would open, building anticipation.

And so when it finally opened, there were lots of interested people ready to coming knocking and buy its bread.

Here's the central strategy: Search Twitter for for keywords related to your business and then look for chances to help people or add value in a way that lacks a sales pitch. Let people discover themselves why your tweets are valuable.

6. Write a blog post featuring people with audiences and send it to them

“Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” - Dale Carnegie

Our final suggested tactic for getting traffic goes back to reaching out and connecting to people with big audiences, and bloggers in particular.

Instead of reaching out by sending a sample of your product, you might get traffic in a more roundabout way: By writing a blog post about them, and sending it to them in an email or via Twitter.

Yes, instead of waiting for them to feature you, you can feature them first.

You’re going to be looking for the influencers in your industry anyway. Write up the top people you find and turn that into an easy blog post featuring the most popular Instagram users, bloggers, and vloggers. Heck, throw in major Twitter accounts in there, too.

Here are possible headlines your blog post can take:

The 10 Most Important Hairstyle Bloggers You Should Be Following

The 15 Twitter Accounts You Should Be Following to Discover New Hairstyles

The 20 Instagram Accounts With the Prettiest Hairstyle Pictures

The Five Youtube Personalities That Have the Best Tutorials on Hair

In the blog post, list them and come up with a short blurb discussing what they’re about. Need an example of what that post might look like? See below.

Next, send the post to them through your Twitter account or to their email address, with a message like the following. If you send the post via Twitter, it’s critically important to mention their handles, with a message like:

@sam, Just wanted to let you know that I love your tweets, and featured you in a list of the top (type of list): yourblogpost.com

And if you send an email, you might consider this template:

Hi Arthur,

My name’s Hermione, and I just wanted to send you a short note to let you know that I’ve featured you in a blog post highlighting the most essential (vloggers/bloggers/Instagram/Twitter users) to follow for insights, along with (famous personality x) and (famous personality y).

Thanks for such great work!

Hermione

yoursite.com

Don’t be too obvious that you’re just trying to get their attention. As long as your blurbs are thoughtful, they’ll be flattered. If they send it out to their network, all the better.

Conclusion:

A store only gets launched once, and you won’t again have an easy excuse to reach out to a lot of people. So do everything you can to get traffic and convert them into customers.

Once you’ve built a following, look toward other ways to establish yourself as an online store. These methods include mastering SEO,following a good content strategy, engaging with fans on social media, and spending money effectively on social media ads and on Google Adwords.

Good luck.

Article originally posted on Shopify

#digital marketing #traffic generation

Use these platforms to manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives.

To succeed in today’s connected world, you need to build a community around your company, brand, and products. Over the last decade, social media monitoring has become a primary form of business intelligence, used to identify, predict, and respond to consumer behavior. Listening to what your customers, competitors, critics, and supporters are saying about you is key to getting great results from your social media campaigns. There are countless tools out there, offering many ways to analyze, measure, display, and create reports about your engagement efforts.

These 50 tools distill data in ways that are relevant to your social media marketing plan, enabling you to figure out how to succeed with your audience.

Determining which tools are right for you requires a clear definition of your objectives. Some are real-time, highly customized dashboards that enable you to manage multiple accounts, use shared work spaces, and respond on multiple social networks with one click. Others are simple, effective, and lightweight, and provide the right amount of functionality.

Alterian/SDL ($) | Alterian is now SDL, an integrated platform that blends the marketing analytics, campaign management, and social media capabilities from Alterian with those of SDL.

Argyle Social ($) | Identify and engage with more prospects, qualify and quantify better leads, and build and maintain stronger relationships by linking social media actions to the marketing platforms you’re already using.

BackTweets (Free) | Track how many people are talking about you, who’s talking, and what they’re saying. You can search through a tweet archive for URLs sent via Twitter, including results for full URL links, shortened URLs, and URLs without the “www” prefix.

BlitzMetrics ($) | Social media dashboards for your brand that monitor content across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, and more. It helps you benchmark against your competitors, learn which demographics are the most active, and track content performance so you can improve your reach and engagement.

Bottlenose ($) | A tool that provides live social intelligence by analyzing activity across all the major social networks. Use it to search, monitor, analyze, target, and engage in real time, all from one place.

Brandwatch ($) |This service reads through and summarizes what’s being said on the Web about brands, people, and products. Define keywords to track (brands, topics, people names, products) and get access to mentions, trend and campaign analysis, and competitive info.

Buffer (Free and $) | An app that manages multiple Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts, with the ability to set a tweeting or updating schedule unique to each. Includes detailed analytics for all your posts.

Buzz Equity ($) | Listen to social media conversations in real time from various social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news, forums, reviews, and video websites.

CARMA ($) | Evaluate your overall social media image, brand recognition, message penetration, competitive positioning, and areas of strength and weakness, and use the data to develop a strategically sound and effective communication strategy.

Collective Intellect ($) | This Oracle platform captures millions of conversations a day across multiple social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. It extracts sentiments, preferences, and intentions from those sources and displays the information in real time.

Crimson Hexagon ($) | Tap into social media conversations with listening tools that help you understand how the most engaged consumers think and feel about your brand, why consumers are choosing other brands over yours, and how your ads/marketing are really perceived by your audience.

Curalate ($) | This tool applies advanced image analytics to social media conversations to give you detailed insights for your initiatives on Instagram and Pinterest.

CustomScoop ($) | Track media coverage, listen to social conversations, monitor your competition, measure PR and marketing effectiveness, and get automated daily reports.

CyberAlert ($) | Monitor 100,000+ consumer-generated media sites for word of mouth, including Twitter, blogs, Usenet (there’s a blast from the past :), and video sites.

Facebook Insights (Free) | Facebook’s built-in tool provides Facebook Page owners with metrics around their content. Helps you understand and analyze trends within user growth and demographics.

Fliptop ($) | A customer intelligence platform that uses publicly available information, including social data, to score leads so you can prioritize your pipeline, better target your audience, and know more about your customers.

Google Alerts (Free) | Get email updates of the latest relevant Google results (Web, news, etc.) based on your queries.

Gorkana ($) | This tool searches through and filters conversations to provides insights into the most relevant conversations about your brand. Offers audits and reports plus daily social media alerts.

HootSuite (Free and $) | A social media management system that enables teams to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one dashboard. Includes audience identification tools, the ability to streamline workflow, and custom reports. I use HootSuite to manage my company’s Twitter account.

Icerocket (Free) | A free resource for brand monitoring, it taps the Web, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, and delivers easy-to-read results in one page.

Klout (Free) | A tool that finds the influencers in your audience so you can target and empower them to become advocates for your brand.

MarketMeSuite ($) | A dashboard similar to Hootsuite and TweetDeck, it can be used to manage and market on multiple social profiles, schedule messages, use geotargeting, and more.

MediaMiser ($) | Web app that collects and analyzes relevant content about your brand from social, traditional, and digital media. Spots trends in media coverage, including sentiment, share of voice, and top regions.

MediaVantage ($) | Pulls traditional media coverage and social media mentions into a database that helps you monitor your reputation, align your teams and messaging, and measure results.

Meltwater ($) | Combines social media monitoring and analytics with social engagement tools to help you create targeted marketing campaigns and build brand relationships.

Mention (Free to $) | An iPhone and Android app that lets you create alerts for your company, its keywords, your brand, and your competitors. Updates in real time.

NetBase ($)| A social intelligence platform that enables you to monitor, understand, react, engage, and publish through both owned and earned channels.

Netvibes (Free and $) | A platform that tracks clients, customers, competitors, and your reputation across media sources, analyzes live results with 3rd party reporting tools, and provides media monitoring dashboards for brand clients.

NUVI ($) | Real-time display of conversations that weight influence and sentiment. You can instantly see the social media conversations taking place in your market and immediately engage your detractors and evangelists.

Pinpuff (Free) | Similar to Klout but focusing only on the Pinterest, it measures the how people share images about your brand and the influence that results.

PinReach ($) | Measures your Pinterest influence by giving you an overall score and easy-to-read charts and tables that show your most popular pins and boards.

Pinterest Web Analytics (Free) | Pinterest’s built-in analytics gives site owners insights into how people are interacting with pins that originate from their websites. See my in-depth post:Use Pinterest Web Analytics to Jumpstart Your Social Media Marketing.

Plugg.io (Free) | Manage and tweet from multiple accounts, get friend suggestions, and automate syndication via blogs and news sources.

Shoutlet ($) | A community management and moderation platform for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and YouTube. Includes integrated workflow tools and task assignments.

Social Marketing Cloud ($) | An automated solution that enables you to monitor and analyze blogs, forums, wikis, and microblogging sites to track real-time conversations about your brand.

Social Mention (Free) | A real-time social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user-generated content from Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google, etc. into a single stream.

Social Response ($) | Formerly Cotweet. Build dynamic Facebook fan pages, respond in real time on Twitter and Facebook, and communicate 1-to-1 with your followers.

Sprout Social ($) | Web app that monitors Twitter, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Gowalla, and other networks where consumers are engaging with businesses and brands. Also offers contact management, competitive insight, lead generation, and analytics.

SWIX Analytics ($) | This tool tracks 75 social media metrics in one dashboard, enabling you to measure your social media influence.

Synthesio ($) | Platform that offers global, multilingual monitoring of your brand’s reputation, campaign management, influencer tracking, and competitive intelligence. Well-suited for large enterprises.

Sysomos ($) | A real-time monitoring dashboard that collects relevant online conversations about your brand and provides insights with detailed metrics and graphics.

Talkwalker ($) | This reporting tool constantly scans the Web and social media to monitor your brand, reputation, and competitors. It can also be used for campaign tracking, market research, and customer service.

Topsy ($) | Monitors tweets, websites, blogs, and social networks, and analyzes/indexes/ranks content and trends.

Trackur ($) | Quickly monitor your online reputation, measure social media trends, and analyze social media mentions for your company, brands, or clients.

TweetBeep (Free and $) | This app is like Google Alerts for Twitter: Choose some keywords and receive daily search results via email.

TweetDeck (Free) | Very similar to HootSuite, only without all the bells and whistles, this client enables you to tweet and track mentions, people, and keywords.

Twitalyzer ($) | One-click access to Twitter metrics that analyze followers, mentions, retweets, and influencers and their locations. It can also be used to compare your Twitter account to those of your competitors.

UberVU ($) | Keeps track of all the major social media platforms in real time and delivers opportunities for audience engagement.

Visible ($) | A social media analytics and engagement dashboard that enables you to monitor, analyze, and engage in social media conversations all in one place. It can also be integrated into your existing CRM system.

Vocus ($) | Cloud marketing and analytics platform that looks at social, search, email, and PR, and delivers real-time marketing opportunities in the form of leads, prospects, social media conversations, curated content and inbound media inquiries.

#Social media #tools #marketing #digital marketing #content strategy

At the round table discussion we decorated the whole wall with custom inforaphics on the different personas of Jewish people, and different Greater Miami Jewish Federation ad campaigns that they ran in the past. We discussed the campaigns and creatives along with TV video campaigns that ran and spoke about how we would have made them better and why certain ones were successful. Visit https://jewishmiami.org/gift/ to learn more.

#charity

I was invited to a pitch/round table with the Greater Miami Jewish Federation where we discussed how to help the Greater Miami Jewish Federation with the great work that they are doing in the Jewish community in Miami.

#charity

This was the deck I presented at ClickZ . My session described The Secrets To Mobile Video where I analyzed the platforms of YouTube Capture, Instagram and Vine. I spoke about case studies and best practices,as well as some common mistakes brands are doing. I also discussed how to create video content that speaks directly to the audience, which platform to use, where to embed and share videos, how to boost the visibility of your videos in the search results and the importance of social media.

#Social media #video marketing #mobile marketing #clickz

Why I Am Passionate About Stumble Upon - This was the presentation I gave at the last CI meeting at Catalyst which is an Ignite talk.

Ignite is a geek event in over 100 cities worldwide. At the events Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of just five minutes.

#SEO #Traffic #stumbleupon #ignite #talk

How To Curate Social Media With Storify

What is Storify?

Storify - https://storify.com/ is a website that helps you tell stories in a timeline format by sorting through and choosing posts from social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

You decide what in the flood of information matters.

Storify can be the story but more often we will use it to enhance a story by embedding it within our article on our website.

Why should we use Storify?

Storify can add new angles to a story you may not otherwise have; it can show emotion connected to an issue.

•It’s an added dimension to our storytelling.

•In a sea of Tweets and Facebook posts, YouTube videos and Instagram photos, you help the reader sort through it all and highlight the information that adds value to their experience.

•We can’t be everywhere all the time. Let the eyes and ears of our readers help tell a story, especially when we can’t, and in their own words.

When should you Storify?

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