I wanted to upload this presentation because a) it’s an awesome example of presentation design and b) the same principles for designing a good presentation can be used to design a blog, or social media campaign. So this SlideShare is fab for all sorts of reasons.
Also… I’m moving! This blog is now shifting over to MarketingAlchemy.net. I’m done here! Finito!
This has little to do with marketing and is more in the form of a rant. But I’ve got to get this off my chest.
I’ve got a friend who shall remain nameless. This person is awesome in many many ways, but damn she makes her life needlessly complicated. I’m frankly amazed she gets anything accomplished. She’s so busy trying to cover all the angles of what might go wrong, that very few projects ever get off the ground.
I see variations on this all the time. Friends and colleagues who claim they want to do something, but…
And then this week I stumbled across this book by Chip and Dan Heath about decision making, and how most people limit their options and end up making the wrong decision, or no decision. One of the traps they identify is that people set up “either or” decisions – a choice between two things, when really there may be more options. And one of those options might be trying things in a small way and seeing how it works, rather than committing to a major, no-turning-back change.
In a sense, that’s what this blog is about. Online marketing tweaks that are simple and low-commitment. Often, the only cost is time.
If you’re interested, the book is called Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. It’s interesting stuff.
Lately I’ve noticed that some of my favorite blogs embed links within the posts to tweet. For example: How to make your blog more sharable [tweet this]
Go ahead. Click the hyperlink above and see what happens.
Pretty cool, eh?
So I looked at the code and figured out how to do it. I’ve been testing it out on other blogs I write for, and people actually do tweet from inside the posts more frequently. (Don’t even get me started on why I was doing this for other people’s blogs and not my own).
I was very proud of myself.
And then I discovered Click to Tweet. It’s a free service, online, that creates the tweet for you. So all my code busting was for nothing.
Here’s how Click to Tweet works. Go to their website and…
Then, when someone clicks on the link, the message will be automatically added to their Twitter status box.
And if that’s clear as mud, just go to their website and you’ll figure it out. Seriously. It’s that easy.
As you’ve probably guessed from this blog, I love Infographics. But I’m no graphic designer. And never will be.
So when I found out about easel.ly, a new website that enables graphic dunderheads like myself to create Infographics… Okay, I was all over it. It’s still in Beta, and the options are fairly limited. But I have high hopes for the site. I created the below in about ten minutes.
Is it a work of staggering genius?
No.
But I created it in ten minutes! For free!
Today I was trolling around the website of a local goat farm for tour information. The price of the tours was hidden – one had to start the reservation process to learn the cost of the ticket. Grr… So I clicked “register” and was taken to a landing page that forced me to set up an account with my name, a password, address, phone number… Before finding out the price. And to add insult to injury, I then had to slog through a Captcha process to prove I was human.
If I wasn’t doing this as a favor for a friend’s daughter, I wouldn’t have done it at all.
Here’s the thing: the more information you ask for, the more hoops you demand prospects jump through, the more likely they’ll click away from your page. Often, we get so excited about collecting prospect information, that we forget that those prospects won’t convert to customers if we make the process too hard. For lead generation, the only information you really need to collect on a landing page is the prospect’s e-mail address. Maybe the name.
So make your landing page easy to love. Or just easy.
A nice, neat visualization of ways to market your website. In my experience, SEO and blogging are best for driving traffic, while e-mail marketing kicks @$$ at generating leads. I enjoy social media and have definitely benefited from it, but if I had to pick three out of the four things to do, I’d drop the social media. Fortunately, I’m not in that position and can do all of the above!
I finally decided to step up my game and create a “real” website. Since I’m a do-it-yourself’er, I’ve been tinkering with it for months but now I think it’s finally good enough to expose to the world. It’s MarketingAlchemy.net, and I’ll be slowly migrating my blog over to it. So please, check it out!
And that’s .net, NOT .com. Someone got to the .com name before I could grab it, curse them.
Interesting infographic here on Pinterest, which tracks with my own personal experience. I see a lot of pinning going on of stuff people want to buy, or dream of buying, which jives with the concept that there’s more brand interaction going on here than on Facebook. That said, I don’t think Pinterest is for every brand. If you sell computer services, well, good luck posting images people want to re-pin. I.e., Pinterest appears much strong at B2C than B2B.
You should be.
Putting your best foot forward online is now expected, and for B2B, LinkedIn has become a critical social network. But writing your profile can be tough. It’s easy to fall into laundry lists of accomplishments (boring) or reiterating your resume (even more boring). There are lots of ways to approach your online bio, but I like to start with “why.” Why do you believe what you do? What’s brought you to that belief? Tell us!
And if you’re looking for information, check out this TED video.
Social Media Marketing 