Posts Tagged ‘social media strategy’

May

Getting value from your business blog – tagging to drive website content

written by Scott Olson

Wondering how you can get value out of your business blog. Here is an idea that I have seen clients and other sites using with great effectiveness. Use blog post tagging to automatically populate posts to relevant pages on your website.

Do you sell into different industries? Tag posts appropriately and design your industry page to pull the appropriate posts into a featured side bar.

Posting about product updates, feedback or features? Link those posts to your product page.

Your blog can be used in so many ways to create relevancy for your prospects, partners and customers. The content you create on your blog can be some of the most valuable web content you have because of its currency and relevancy to very specific topics. Whether you use it to nurture leads with email marketing, or to drive fresh web content, look for ways to use your blog across your business goals and you will make the most of your investment in this important marketing asset.

Tags: blog, marketing strategy, social media strategy, web content
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Jan

Using community to promote your product – A look at Seth Godin’s promotion of “Linchpin”

written by Scott Olson

There are all kinds of books and experts who will show you how to use social media and your community to promote your product. Certainly product promotion has changed, the power of advertising has diminished and leveraging the interconnected nature of your user community is a must for a social media launch.

Rather than generate another in a long line of posts of how to do this, I thought I point to a great example of someone doing this right now. Seth Godin is promoting his new book, “Linchpin“, and is leveraging his considerable network to get the word out.

In advance of the launch of his latest book, Seth Godin asked the followers on his blog to contribute $30 or more to the Acumen Fund and in return he would send the first 3,000 contributors an early copy to read and review. I signed up for my copy and should be receiving it this week.

This is a brilliant promotion and leverages grass roots support to get the word out about his book in contrast to traditional costly marketing campaigns. Now, Seth Godin is one of the top bloggers on the net and has a huge following, but here are some things we can all learn about his approach to generating buzz for his new book: (more…)

Tags: marketing strategy, social media strategy, startup marketing
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Dec

Guidelines for competitive positioning? Don’t emulate Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer.

written by Scott Olson

This is an old clip, but in honor of Apple’s iPhone officially passing Windows Mobile market share I thought it was worth pulling back up Steve Ballmer’s original reaction to the announcement of the iPhone.

This may be one of the worst examples of a CEO talking about a serious competitor that I have seen. The mocking laugh and outright disregard, for what anyone with any foresight could see was going to be a serious competitor, is inexcusable. If I were a shareholder of Microsoft, which I am not, I would be outside Ballmer’s office with torch and pitchfork for forfeiting a 9 year head start in the market to Apple because of lack of vision.

Want to avoid sticking your foot in your mouth? Here are some guidelines for positioning against the competition: (more…)

Tags: marketing strategy, messaging strategy, social media strategy, startup marketing
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Oct

New PR book focuses on shift from information distribution to customer interaction

written by Scott Olson

I came across a post today on one of my favorite web sites, Online Marketing Blog, from Lee Odden reviewing a new PR book “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations.” It’s a good review and the content looks interesting enough that I ordered the book to take on my trip next week.

The essence of the book is something that I believe strongly in and have posted about several times, and that is PR has fundamentally changed. The book looks like it addresses the shift in PR from simple information distribution to a strategy that utilizes content creation and social participation more fully. As companies experience diminishing returns on the way they have historically run PR they will need to adapt to the new media environment. Certainly it looks like it’s worth a read.

Tags: blog, new media PR, social media strategy
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Oct

Bend Venture Conference wrap up – reasons for startup optimism

written by Scott Olson

Had a great time at the Bend Venture Conference last week. Congratulations to Precision Plant Systems who won the day and received the prize of $125k in venture funding. My personal favorite company presenting was Second Porch, located right here in Portland, OR and who is busy connecting second home owners to their personal connections who might like to rent their property.

I met a lot of great people at the conference and will definitely plan on attending next year. If you are in the northwest and are involved at all with startups, this conference is a great value and worth your time.

Keynote speaker Paul Kedrosky (Twitter @pkedrosky) was great. He spoke to the reasons for optimism in the venture community and for entrepreneurs in general. His reasons for optimism focused first on the shift away from the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) industry of our greatest minds. One stat he used was that 40% of MIT grads in 2003 (I’m not sure of the year, but think that was it) went to wall street instead of new business creation. (more…)

Tags: entrepreneur, marketing strategy, social media strategy
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Oct

Startup PR? Content with a side of outreach and influence please.

written by Scott Olson

This just in. PR is changing in a big way and companies better change the way they think about traditional PR services. It used to be that the biggest part of your PR strategy consisted of managing your press release calendar and outreach strategy to the press and industry analysts. For bigger news this often was accompanied by a press tour where you would hop on a plane and make your visit to the New York, Boston, San Francisco triumvirate. Line up a customer quote and interview and wait for the articles to roll in.

No longer. (more…)

Tags: digital PR, marketing strategy, social media strategy, startup marketing, web content
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Sep

Blogging for business goals – followers vs. rich content

written by Scott Olson

I had a great conversation this morning with the executives of a successful startup about best practices for business blogging. We discussed many aspects of maintaining a business blog and one of the topics that arose was around whether comments were critical to blog success. I have blogged about comments as a metric of success for blogs before, but this time it took a little bit of a different angle.

The question was also directed at whether it was better to try to promote and build a following for company representatives as thought leaders, or whether it was more important to publish regular rich content that supported sales objectives. The answer to the question isn’t the same for every company. (more…)

Tags: blog, social media, social media strategy, startup marketing
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Sep

Five marketing tools I use every day

written by Scott Olson

After putting up yesterday’s post on the five DEMOfall09 products that I will have to check out, I thought it would be good to post the top five tools I use every day to assist me with my web marketing tasks.

TweetDeck – TweetDeck was actually the eye opener for me about the value of Twitter. I currently use it to manage both my @scottdolson1 account and a personal account I am playing around with. I have a separate column to keep track of my Facebook feed and use it to cross post there as well. I am waiting for them to add the ability to update status on LinkedIn, but you can’t have everything. I have also looked at CoTweet, but I’m not currently managing multiple users on the same Twitter account so TweetDeck meets my needs perfectly. (more…)

Tags: marketing strategy, social media strategy
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Sep

Five products at DEMOfall09 I will have to check out

written by Scott Olson

DEMOfall09 is fully in swing and there are a number of interesting technologies being launched there this year. Here are five products that I will have to check out:

Tinker.com – This is an interesting aggregator of social media feeds with filters for higher profile tweeters and an ability to add an event stream to your own site. It’s an interesting way to highlight topics at an event you are attending or a particularly relevant current event. Want to check out the widget? It’s on the DEMOfall09 website. (more…)

Tags: social media strategy
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Sep

Good YouTube video on social media revolution

written by Scott Olson

A client forwarded me this video today which gives some good perspective into the magnitude of the use of social media by the buyers you might want to reach. Certainly social media has changed marketing significantly and it is important for any business to carefully consider how they are going to get their message to their ideal buyers.