YOUTILITY

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against everything. To win in this hyper-competitive environment, you must ask “How can we help?”

If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Includes interviews with dozens of companies practicing Youtility, and provides 6 blueprints for building Youtility in your company.

Available for pre-order soon (get up to 7 exclusive bonuses) at http://YoutilityBook.com

Social Media Marketing Case Study – More is More

The last social media case study in a 3-part series this week. Sometimes, your customers should be the star of your social media show, not the brand. That notion is at the heart of this social media case study featuring Spellbinders Paper Arts, a five year-old manufacturer of tools for the paper crafting enthusiast. If [...]

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11 Must-Dos for the Serious Blogger

First in a three post series this week about social media case studies. 11 Must Dos For The Serious Blogger  View more documents from Jason Baer. If your blog is essentially a post-modern diary where you share your deepest, personal feelings about life in a cathartic way, this is not the post for you. However, [...]

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Finally! A Blog Post Scoreboard

Knowing which of your blog posts are most successful, and in what way, is invaluable in the never-ending process of honing your blog’s content approach and community orientation. Bloggers have always been challenged by on one hand having both a surplus of potential success metrics, and a scarcity of data aggregation tools. The new PostRank [...]

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Olivier Blanchard – The Twitter 20 Interview on Social Media ROI

A passionate advocate for the ability of social media to fundamentally transform brands, Olivier Blanchard is on a mission. Based (like @spikejones also a Twitter 20 subject) in Greenville, South Carolina, Olivier has moved his Brand Builder consultancy into the social media realm, with a focus on smart strategies and sharp measurement. His series of [...]

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Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy?

I have been the champion of my fantasy football league two of the past four years, and while I’ve had a rough start to this season, I’m still the defending champion. And while I appreciate the winner’s check, having the trophy on my desk for a year is much, much sweeter. Trophies are important. They [...]

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Why Social Media Helps the Rich Get Richer

Do you accept the premise that “social media” has expanded well beyond its consumer-generated content roots to encompass a much larger trend of customer-centrism and candor? Do you believe that the core of a successful social media strategy is making your company more like a person and less like a machine? Do you believe that [...]

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A New Formula for Measuring PR Success

Isn’t there a better way to measure PR effectiveness? Experienced digital marketers know that “conversion rate” is the holy grail of online success metrics. Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to a Web site that accomplish an objective. If 100 people visit your Web site, and 7 of them fill out your lead form, [...]

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Friend or Faux – 6 Ways to Activate Customers

Two questions. How many Facebook fans does your company have? What do you want your Facebook fans to do on behalf of your company? Way too many people can answer the first question, but not the second. And that’s the biggest weakness of company-based social media at present. The Friend Bubble Doing something (buying Google [...]

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The Incredible Efficiency of Social Media

(originally written for TalentZoo) The explosion in marketing and message conveyance opportunities is simply breathtaking. We’ve gone from 3 TV stations to 500+. Satellite radio. Hundreds of new magazines. Out-of-home advertising on every available surface. And a little something called online advertising that’s now larger than radio in ad dollars spent. As a result, audiences [...]

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Think Bottom Line, Not Top Line, on Social Media ROI

There’s been a lot of conversation lately about social media ROI but the hand-wringing about it is totally misplaced. True ROI (return on investment) calculations are possible in cause/effect marketing scenarios where you can isolate tactics and variables to determine incremental revenue generated. Today, the only marketing programs that can semi-reliably generate “real” ROI calculations are SEO, [...]

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