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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
Free Social Media Worksheets Worth Every Penny
Convince & Convert is all about hype-free social media. Practical, achievable advice you can put into place in your company or organization today. To that end we’ve developed a series of free social media worksheets that you can use to help keep elements of your social media program on track. We’ll keep adding these worksheets […]
Make it Bigger – The 4 Types of Corporate Blogs
Is your blog broad enough? Despite all the hoopla and teeth gnashing about micro-blogging like Twitter, and medium-blogging like Posterous, the good old blog isn’t going anywhere. For many social media objectives, the blog just works better. It’s more searchable, more convincing, and more flexible. But often, it’s also too narrow. Yes, I’ve advocated strongly […]
It’s Who You Know – Maximizing Your Company’s Social Reach
Put down your guard. It’s about people, not logos. These are the two primary tenets of effective social media. In practice, executing on them requires that you communicate with your customers and prospects across a variety of social media outposts, with significant frequency. (I tell my clients that if you can’t add at least 7-9 […]
Passion Trumps Position
Are you trying to embrace social media at bayonet point? Yes, you should absolutely broaden your social media efforts, and get more people from your company involved, and in more places. But, you should not do that at the expense of the secret ingredient of social media – Passion. Why do features and benefits-laden messages […]
Danny Brown – The Twitter 20 Interview on Social Media Authenticity
Social media is a means to an end, it’s not the end. That’s the philosophy of Danny Brown, the Scotland-born social media and PR consultant living in Canada. His blog, http://www.dannybrown.me is a must-read, full of timely, practical advice for marketers looking to successfully incorporate social media into the communications mix. Danny is one of […]
Building Your Blog Community: It’s a Matter of W FACT
Are you building a community, or an audience? In the last couple weeks, I’ve had two experiences that really shook me up on the topic of community. First was Chris Brogan’s simple but devastatingly effective post about the difference between audience and community being the direction the chairs are facing. Second, was a conversation I […]
Build Thought Leadership Through Social Networking
Remember, social media is about people, not logos. That’s why the most powerful form of social capital is personal, not corporate. That was the theme of my day-long workshop for the Association of Management Consulting Firms last week in New York. My friend and client Elizabeth Sosnow of BlissPR co-presented with me. Titled “You’re a […]
Observations on Day 365
This week makes it one year since I started writing this blog, and I wanted to take a moment to say a sincere thanks to every one of you that occupies even a minute of their increasingly precious time by reading Convince & Convert. The volume of high quality, free, online content (especially about marketing) […]
8 Ingredients of Intoxicating Blog Posts
Is there a method to your blogging madness? Blogging isn’t new, but the notion of blog authorship contributing to marketing effectiveness is very much gaining favor in the U.S., resulting in a flood of new bloggers, especially B2B. Encouraged by inbound marketing proponents like Hubspot, Chris Brogan, Michael Gass, (and me), organizations are jumping on […]
Why Blogs Will Kill Dissent
While newspapers and magazines make increasingly Draconian decisions to try to escape their inexorable spiral of decline, the very future of publishing comes into question. Will life as we know it stop once the Grey Lady and her sisters cease to exist in their historical form? No. Even without papers and mags, Britney will still […]
Shannon Paul – The Twitter 20 Interview on Social Media and PR
Shannon Paul burst onto the social media scene like a runaway freight train. Her blog is a must-read, and she’s transformed the social media stylings of the Detroit Red Wings, and most recently the innovative financial services company Peak6. Shannon’s insights on attaining internal alignment around social media, and the new role of public relations […]
The Inefficiencies of the Reputation Economy
Nothing gets bloggers more excited than a discussion about blog rankings. Many conversations I had at South by Southwest touched on this subject. Jason Falls asked Guy Kawasaki to move his Social Media Explorer up the list on http://alltop.com (a great resource to find first-class blogs, by the way). Mack Collier told me that his […]
The Wisdom of Social Media X-Rays
Are you actually helping your company via social media? Much of contemporary social media effort and brand reputation management is focused on uncovering the positive. Number of friends. Number of followers. Blog posts. Blog comments. Share of voice. Net promoter score. Brands (and their agencies) are creating reports and smiling when those reports show how […]