Convince and Convert Blog: Where Social Media and Email Collide

Thanks to Jason Falls for the inspiration (okay, it’s a straight rip-off) for this post. Jason pointed out five lesser-known bloggers that he reads regularly (including Convince & Convert). His post seems to have triggered an a-ha moment, as several other excellent social media bloggers including Mack Collier and Amber Naslund have posted similar lists of people to read. 

This is truly the genius of the World Wide Web. A hyper-linked community that enables users to find interesting and useful content based on the recommendations of real people, enabled (but not driven by) technology. 

Here’s my Fab Five bloggers. People I read that may be less well-known by Convince & Convert readers. Also, because I work in email marketing and digital marketing in addition to social media, my list is not purely social media focused, as are those cited above. 

Tamara Gielen

Tamara’s blog BeRelevant is dedicated to B2B email marketing best practices. Tamara doesn’t post a ton of her own content, but her ability to cull down the huge output of blog content about the email industry, and include only what’s legitimate and groundbreaking on her own site is a godsend. 

Tamara is also the founder of the Email Marketers Club, a social network for professional emailers with more than 1,700 members. By day, Tamara is the Director of Email and Digital Dialogue for OgilvyOne. She lives in Belgium, and can be found on Twitter @tamaragielen 

Bryan Eisenberg

One of the few folks out there who have been in digital marketing as long as me, Eisenberg is a conference staple (especially search conferences). His insights into customer experience, usability, information architecture, and conversion rate optimization are simply unparalleled. If you need to get more results from your Web site, he’s a guy to follow.

His blog Grokdotcom is more of a company-wide production now, but still brimming with insights. Watch for his regular series of books too. His new one, “Call to Action” is outstanding, and “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark” is required reading for all Web designers, project managers, and information architects I hire. 

He’s on Twitter @theGrok

Dan Zarrella

A great blogger with no shortage of opinions about social media, search, and cross-linking. Not afraid to rock the boat, Dan Zarrella brings serious science to the discussion of social media and viral marketing. He believes that “going viral” is no accident, and I believe he’s the number one guy to watch in terms of the emerging confluence between blogging, other forms of social media, and SEO.

He’s got some very useful tools for maximizing the search and viral friendliness of your blog. Check them out in his Tools section. 

Dan is on Twitter @danzarrella

Michael Gass

I do a lot of work for ad agencies and PR firms, and Michael Gass’ blog Fuel Lines is redefining how agencies think about business development. A great example of a blogger picking a distinct topic and absolutely owning it, Michael eats his own dog food (and the food of other dogs as well). You see, his consulting business is based on helping agencies use smart blogging, SEO, and social media to generate inbound leads - rather than shooting in the dark making cold calls.

In addition to regular, insightful posts about the future of ad agencies, Michael has added a ton of value to his blog with a sweeping survey of the agency biz dev landscape, and a “best agency blog” competition.

Michael has been a huge help and a great friend to Convince & Convert. If you’re at an agency (and even if you’re not), read his stuff. He’s on Twitter @michaelgass

Jason Falls

Yeah, he put me in his five. But, I would have had him in here regardless. With the tsunami of blog posts, opinions, pass-alongs, retweets, and me-toos out there, Jason Falls maintains an exceptionally high quality level. If he says something on his blog - Social Media Explorer, it’s worth reading. If he sends a tweet, the link is worth clicking.

Unlike many (most?) social media consultants, Jason is actually a practitioner of the art. His work for Jim Beam via his agency Doe Anderson is one of the legendary examples of social media press releases and integrated microsites. His blog isn’t about what social media will become, it’s about what social media is now, and how to do it right. 

Jason is a straight shooter that’s not caught up in his own emerging Web fame, and among the top tier of social media and PR 2.0 “names” I find him to be the most dedicated to sharing and extremely giving with his time. He was an early champion of Convince & Convert, and I’ll never forget that. (Chris Brogan is another one that’s amazingly cool to lesser known folks, despite his insane schedule and content generation volume). 

Jason is a must-follow on Twitter @jasonfalls

Who Are Your Fab Five? Leave Them in the Comments, Or Write Your Own Post

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Welcome. If you liked that, there's plenty more. Please subscribe to my RSS feed. You can also find me on Twitter @jaybaer

My friend Michael Gass, who writes the excellent Fueling Ad Agency New Business blog, has launched a survey of small and mid-sized ad agencies and the current state of their business development program. 

With the economy getting as ugly as pre-surgery Joan Rivers, figuring out how to keep your agency in front of key prospects is more important than ever. (If you haven’t read my post on “5 Reasons Why Digital Marketing Will Thrive in the Recession” you can find it here)

The survey takes literally 2 minutes to complete. 3 if you’re checking email simultaneously. 

The best part is, if you send Michael an email (michael at michael gass dot com) he’ll send you a copy of the results when analysis is completed. 

Take the ad agency new business and promotion survey here

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Excellent post by Bart Cleveland on the AdAge Small Agency blog recently about Comfort Zones.

Bart made the point that if you get too careful and comfortable in your agency, you won’t attract clients that are looking for innovative work. There’s no question this is true. His post used “risky” or groundbreaking creative as the benchmark, but I’d say what services an agency provides is perhaps an even better measure of its Comfort Zone.

Digital marketing is NOT comfortable for most “traditional” advertising and PR firms. I get that. I’ve lived it. But, given the fact that digital marketing is growing extremely fast at the expense of other tactics, and given the fact that this will be even more acute in a down economy, agencies’ resistance to fully embrace digital is confusing.

The vast majority of agency principals are very smart folks. I know this to be true. They are good businesspeople, and great marketers. They clearly recognize that digital is taking a larger and larger share of the pie every year, and that digital-only shops are a growing threat.

Thus, if the awareness is there, I conclude that fear and uncertainty is the obstacle for most agencies to really get going on digital.

Digital Marketing is Like Learning French

In my experience, many agency leaders are immediately overwhelmed by the dizzying array of numbers, vendors, acronyms and general craziness inherent in digital marketing. I absolutely understand that coming at digital head on can be frustrating and baffling.

But, there’s an awful lot of jargon and insider knowledge in traditional advertising and PR too, and agency principals managed to pick that up somewhere.

True, digital marketing has a lot of specific terms. But if you can learn a foreign language, or learn how to write up a media plan, you certainly can figure out digital marketing basics.

It’s Not Different. It’s The Same.

The number one mistake that I see agencies make is to treat digital totally differently than other elements of their organization. In a lot of shops, it’s like Area 51. The digital guys are separated, quarantined and viewed with a mix of reverence and curiosity.

This causes two huge problems.

- Your digital guys have almost no oversight because nobody can speak their language
- You never really integrate digital into the fabric of the agency or even at a campaign level, because your “traditional” teams don’t understand or work closely with the digital teams.

There’s no other marketing tactic that gets treated this way. Would you hire a single radio expert and put them in a corner of the office and only deal with them when necessary and then say “okay radio guy, I don’t understand this very well, but do your stuff.” Of course not.

Ultimately, digital marketing is just that…..marketing. The same rules apply. Figure out the characteristics of prospective customers. Figure out how to most efficiently reach them. Craft messages that matter to them. Deliver those message. The main difference between traditional and digital marketing is the ability to measure success definitively, and that’s an advantage that should be embraced by agencies.

Many agencies are beginning to implement digital marketing tactics on their own behalf, using themselves as guinea pigs to develop greater digital prowess and confidence. This is an approach advocated by Michael Gass at Fueling Ad Agency New Business who works with agencies to set up their own blogs.

If you’re not fully embracing digital, why not? Leave a comment.

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In a shocking (and embarassing) revelation today, AdWeek uncovered that of the 56 world-class digital marketing agencies featured in their Annual Report Card, just 5 are purchasing their own brand names in PPC.

In fairness to the firms, most of them appear at or near the top of organic search results for their own brand names, but several studies have shown that click through rates (and conversion rates) typically increase when your brand is at the top of BOTH organic and paid search results. Incidentally, this is why the notion of dropping your paid search when you achieve organic search success is a bit of fallacy.

Also of note are smaller firms that are purchasing competitors’ brand names in PPC and showing up in paid search results. A crafty tactic, to be sure. Note that current case law says that you can in fact purchase competitors’ names and trademarks as a search term, but you cannot use those trademarks in your actual PPC ad copy.

If you’re an agency, why would you NOT cover as many bases as possible with your organic and paid search marketing efforts? The costs are minuscule and the results can be significant. In fact, at Off Madison Ave and Mighty Interactive (where I handle strategy and ideas), search marketing has long been a primary driver of serious new business leads.

If even the big digital shops aren’t buying their own brands in paid search, how many traditional agencies are doing so? If you’re not playing in this sandbox, get on it. You could literally have a campaign up by the end of the day. Similar Posts That You Might Enjoy

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