Subscribe to Marketing with RSS
Our latest round-up has some good stuff to help your social media planning and your small business.
Mark Evans asks on the Sysomos blog whether social media equals social sales. He explains that brands aren’t transparent about why they use social media and perhaps it’s time to readjust the return on social investment. (more…)
This week on the Small Business blog, we’re talking the holidays. Tannette Johnson-Elie takes a look at how to gear up for the holidays.
If you’re not ready for the holidays just yet, entrepreneur Brett Markinson discusses fear can lead to “entrepreneuritis” while Mark Evans takes us through the Cloud and the tools that can help your business.
On the Sysomos blog, Mark Evans shows how Reddit can help you market your product.
Of course, don’t forget to read our MOvember article to see what people are saying about facial fuzz.
Update: Sheldon Levine updates us on the latest MOvember news.
By Ryan LeClaire
Your press release is not an ad. Don’t write it like one.
You’re probably guilty of doing this. If so, don’t feel bad. Most people try to write a news release, but end up writing an ad with a dateline. Thousands of them hit the wire every day. Most of them are promptly ignored by newsrooms, writers and social influencers who can see right through them. (more…)
By Renee Sylvestre-Williams
It’s been a busy week on the Small Business and Sysomos blogs.
Tannette Johnson-Elie took a look at how mentors can help small business entrepreneurs while Kelli Korducki wondered how companies can establish a corporate dress code.
Bad names happen all the time but a kids’ store named after an overblown, overwrought book about imprisonment and death? If you’re of a certain demographic, you may have read Flowers in the Attic. Angelica Moreno shows us why you really need to do some market research.
Entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den Arlene Dickinson launched Arlene Dickinson Enterprises this week for entrepreneurs.
On the Sysomos blog, Sheldon Levine looks at baseball’s 2012 World Series. If you’re not into sports but love politics, take a look at who won the three presidential debates and what Canadians think of the US elections (a lot).
Plus there’s all the great content on this blog. Like we said, it’s been a busy week!
By Ryan LeClaire, Marketing Producer
There are a million reasons that your press release can succeed and only a few things that can hold it back. However, 90% of all press releases contain at least one of these mistakes and quickly makes the content easily forgettable and dismissible.
Here are five quick questions you can ask yourself as you write your release or while you’re reading it over. (more…)
By Lisa Davis, Director of Marketing
If you were online today, chances are pretty good you came across an infographic. You might have liked it enough to tweet it, and maybe you emailed it to a friend. Heck, you might even be ‘old school’ enough to have printed it and pinned it to the wall of your office cubicle. There’s no doubt that infographics are everywhere. B2B and B2C companies are producing them by the thousands to communicate information as diverse as oral hygiene and uranium production. They are posting them to their websites and Facebook pages and building them into their product launches, marketing campaigns and survey results. But why?
This week on our Small Business Blog we’ve got tips from marketing and branding experts on how to develop and grow your business.
Angelica Moreno, who has managed the well-known household brands Becel, Hellmann’s and Sensodyne, takes us through the 4Ps of marketing – the first in a series looking at how to correctly market your product.
Karen Geier, the co-founder of Shyndyg.com and a digital marketing executive, walks us through the steps to establishing your brand’s identity.
Aaaaah, the business blog. A welcoming destination where visitors get to glimpse behind the velvet ropes and experience your organization’s unique business personality. Where they’re drawn to captivating content that speaks to them. And where feedback and conversation are encouraged. Do these statements describe your organization’s blog? Or is it a foreboding place that posts business updates and pushes corporate propaganda? If it’s the latter, or if you want to improve the results of a so-so blog, take a few tips from Jeff Ente, publisher of “Who’s Blogging What?” and Mark Evans, award-winning blogger and journalist.
The insight and intelligence that can be gathered from closely monitoring the activity and conversations across the social web are rapidly becoming “must have’s” for any company or brand. Tech journalist and social strategist Amber Mac sat down with our own Jeff Cann during her Canadian Tech Spotlight series at Toronto’s Dx3 Canada conference to talk about the power of tapping into billions of online conversations, and how companies can monitor and evaluate their brand health, campaign performance and consumer sentiment.
We continue to be amazed at the variety of creative ways our clients use Sysomos Heartbeat and MAP (Media Analysis Platform) to monitor, analyze and engage in the social sphere. Although the basics are the same, the applications are as wide-ranging as each client’s business objectives. There’s no doubt that social media monitoring is today’s must-have for every type of organization, whether B2B, B2C, non-profit, government, media outlet or agency. The possibilities are endless.
Social media is rife with business buyers searching for business solutions. According to Forrester Research, 84 percent of business buyers say word of mouth has the greatest influence over their purchasing decisions, far surpassing any form of paid media. And Twitter is a great place to find business buyers. It’s a veritable goldmine that can pay off handsomely for B2B organizations. Jonathan Astor, social media lead at Valtech and Sheldon Levine, community manager at Marketwire + Sysomos, show us how to find and nurture social media leads. To listen to Jonathan and Sheldon discuss this fascinating topic, tune into the archived version of our recent webinar: “B2B Social Media: Turning Untapped Conversations into Business Wins.”
Positive word of mouth and brand advocacy are important to any organization. But for nonprofits, groups that are typically challenged by strict budgets, limited human resources and government regulations, word-of-mouth and advocacy marketing are key strategies. Enter social media and the abundance of wide-open channels (most of them free to use) and communities of socially and ethically conscious millions. For many nonprofits, the opportunity to identify and tap into groups of like-minded citizens helps the organization not only share its mission and mandate, but use the common collective of fans and followers to spread those messages far(ther) and wide(r). Let’s look at ten nonprofits doing just that.
If you’re in marketing, PR or any communications role you’ve likely been inundated with expert advice on how to incorporate content marketing into your business strategies and heard why it’s a must-have in your corporate plan. Many practitioners are just getting familiar with terms like content marketing, content strategy, content publishing and content curation, while others are writing books and blog posts about it. If you’re new to it all, don’t despair: You’re probably already doing some kind of content marketing, even if you don’t realize it.
Anyone who’s ever written a press release knows it’s all about the one-two punch: You want people to read your release, and you want them to act on what they’ve read in some way. Whether the goal is to solicit media attendance at the grand-opening of your new corporate headquarters, announce the launch of a new line of kids’ organic clothing to generate online sales, or notify the public of contaminated deli meats, the intent of any press release is the same. Social media has become a driving force in the way we create and publish news, so making press releases more social media friendly is a smart communications tactic. It’s not difficult, and it opens the door for having your content seen, shared and acted upon by more people.
There’s no doubt about it; 2012 is going to be a year of great conversations with your customers, employees, investors and the media. You’ll create fantastic content and share it with the people who matter most to your company. You’ll provide them with the news and information they need to make informed decisions about buying your products and services, and you’ll build strong, long-lasting relationships with the people who can make your brand better and your business more successful. And you’ll do it all by being engaged.
To be influential in social media can mean many things. Sometimes it’s all about the numbers — the sheer volume of followers that one individual can amass is truly staggering, and with every Facebook post or tweet, millions of people have the potential to be swayed by that influence on what to buy, where to travel or how to vote. But it’s not always just about numbers. The creativity, expertise and unique insight that an influencer shares with his or her community are what truly make them worthy of following. Take a look at our choices for some of the most influential in the social sphere in 2011.
Tech toys are big business and it seems that the coolest, fastest, smallest, smartest, most multifunctional or just plain “gotta have it” products are particularly popular around the holiday season. But just because something is cool doesn’t mean it can’t also be useful, and some of the best digital tools are those that are equal parts play and productivity (smartphones, anyone?). With this week’s Pulse, we asked ourselves one simple question: What fun and functional gadgets would make great gifts for the busy MarCom or PR professional in your life? We searched the e-shelves and found ten, any of which are bound to please.
When we read about the importance of listening, monitoring and being active in social media, it is typically in reference to B2C companies. Social media is almost seen as “sexy” and a “must-have strategy” for B2C success, yet we tend to hear less about how important real-time listening and social media monitoring is for B2B companies. Typically, B2B marketers are not looking for the “sexy” solution; they want practical ways to measure their brand, their campaigns, and their place in the market, and they want to use that intelligence to make impactful business decisions. What’s more, many B2B companies don’t think that they have enough brand mentions to warrant monitoring online conversations. But B2B companies, like their B2C counterparts, can benefit tremendously from listening to conversations in the social sphere.
As the month of November comes to close we bid a fond “adieu” to all the wild moustaches that show themselves but once a year. That’s right, by the time this post is up MOvember will officially be over (but I’m sure you can still donate). For those not in the know, all the creepy moustaches you’ve seen over the past month have been part of a worldwide charity effort to raise money for prostate cancer research, while having a little fun. Well, we started off the month with a MOvember blog post, so I thought it only fair to close it the same way.
The traditional features release with its consumer-directed, ready-to-go content is ideal for exposing your messages to a diverse audience. But features releases can accomplish another goal. Because features stories now appear on media websites and search engines that reach millions of people online, with a little creativity and planning your features release can become a valuable tool for measuring the success of your PR and marketing activities. Not only can you reach new target audiences, but you can also drive them to your website where you’re able to track traffic patterns, garner new business leads and even generate revenue. In short, features releases can play an important role in gathering market intelligence and demonstrating measurable ROI.
