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Every week I’ll share the best digital marketing articles I’ve read and shared on my social channels.This week’s entries are from Tomasz Tunguz, Dan Virgillito and Lars Lofgren. If you like these articles please support the authors by following them on Twitter or sharing their content.

Building Content Strategy by Segmenting and Analyzing Twitter Followers

I can count on zero fingers the number of people I know that are digging deep into the analytics behind their Twitter followers to inform their content strategy. Why? Because the tools for this are clunky and hard to work with. Followerwonk will tell you some, but you’ll end up with quite a bit of Excel work to extract meaningful data.

Tomasz makes a compelling argument for taking the time to really understand your Twitter followers interests though. And, it sounds like he has a tool written to do just that.

Follow @ttunguz

How to Write Copy in the Post-PC Era

Anticipating the devices your audience is most likely to consume your content is just plain smart. This article by Dan Virgillito offers some strategies for paragraph length to ease the pain of long form reading on phones and tablets as well as some key best practices for cross device copywriting.

The 5 Best Ways to Get Feedback from Your Customers

I really appreciated this article from Lars Lofgren on the best ways to get feedback from your customers (site visitors), especially since it deals with post content calls to action which I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Are you asking your site visitors if the content they are reading is useful? How about asking them how you can make your site more relevant. Lots of good tips here, as well as a look at some companies which aren’t doing quite as good of a job at this.

Follow @LarsLofgren

The post The Best Digital Marketing Articles – May 6, 2013 appeared first on Not Will Smith.

Every week I’ll share the best digital marketing articles I’ve read and shared on my social channels.  This week’s entries are from Amber Naslund and Seth Godin. If you like these articles please support the authors by following them on Twitter or sharing their content.

The Begrudging Death of the Social Media Superstar

In the beginning there were social media “rockstars.” They were the people who understood Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and were the first to realize their potential for marketing. They were also the people who that your business would consult with (via an agency) when it came to being social.

And then everyone took a woke up and realized that being social is a skill, not a job. That being social is something that everyone in the business can (and should) do.

Amber’s article on the death of the social media superstar talks about this phenomenon, but also explains why we should be thinking more strategically and why the social media rockstars of today are more like bridge builders than trail blazers.
 
Follow @AmberCadabra

I don’t want to do that, I want to do this!

Feels like every week I include Seth Godin in my best digital marketing articles of the week but damnit, he just keeps writing awesome stuff! And since his writing always seems to speak to me, chances are I’ll keep including his work here.

Godin suggests that if your plan for success requires that someone else “pick or anoint you” that you need a new plan. Don’t wait for someone else to notice how well you write, how smart or talented you are. Make use of those skills and pick yourself! Build your ideas to spread and they will.
 
Follow @ThisIsSethsBlog

The post The Best Digital Marketing Articles – April 29, 2013 appeared first on Not Will Smith.

Every week I’ll share the best digital marketing articles I’ve read and shared on my social channels.  This week’s entries are from Brian Clark writing at Marketing Land, Veronica Maria Jarski at Marketing Profs, and Seth Godin. If you like these articles please support the authors by following them on Twitter or sharing their content.

The Mindset the Makes Online Marketing Work

This particular article is a powerful reminder for not only those of us who have been in online for a while, but for those who are new to it and are coming from a more traditional background in marketing. Brian reminds us that although the online marketing world is awash in a myriad of different tactics, all roads still lead back to content, social and search.

Follow @copyblogger

You know you’re a marketer if…

Less of an article and more of an example of social media in action, this slideshow by Marketing Profs is a perfect example of tapping your online community to help you generate meaningful content. Marketing Profs queried its Facebook community to finish a simple sentence: “You know you’re a marketer if…”

Then they took the answers and created some gorgeous illustrations which could be used in a blog, shared on Pinterest (or Twitter/Facebook), emailed to a friend, etc. Not only were the answers smart, but the approach was.

Follow @Veronica_Jarski

How big is critical mass?

A great reminder that critical mass for your marketing message may not be as large as you think, Seth Godin writes that critical mass is the minimum size of the excited audience that leads to a wildfire.  It is when people start to respond to you because everyone else is.

But that number doesn’t have to be in the millions and I think too often as marketers we get caught up with feeling we need huge numbers of followers or likes to consider our campaigns successful. In the end, we only need to enough of the “right” people to really be successful.
 
Follow @thisissethsblog

The post The Best Digital Marketing Articles – April 22, 2013 appeared first on Not Will Smith.

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Bloggers love blogging. What they don’t love, necessarily, is all the promotion that is necessary to get their content seen. And let’s face it, those long hours of tweeting and pitching article content could be better spent writing new more content.

Make your WordPress blog work for you by promoting itself

In this first blog in a series dedicated to making your WordPress blog work for you, I’m going to share this super effective and easy to use tool that turns your blog into a self promotion machine – literally.

What is this tool you ask? It’s called Tweetily and its job is to help expose content on your site automatically via scheduled tweets.

Now, there are lots of tools out there for scheduling tweets. Buffer, which I have written about extensively on this site, is a great tool for scheduling tweets at pre-defined intervals and then measuring the effectiveness of those tweets via some really impressive analytics. However, where Tweetily differs is that it handles the selection and automation of the scheduling completely on its own.

The video above demonstrates how Tweetily works. Essentially, you install the plugin, set up some basic preferences and let it run. Tweetily dutifully pulls a post or page from your WordPress site at random at pre-defined intervals and tweets out a link to them.

This is great for a number of reasons:

1. Saves you time
2. Exposes older blog posts on your site people may have missed
3. Plays well with url shorteners like bit.ly, which also provide analytics
4. Helps you remain consistent with  your social sharing which is a key driver of follows

Tweetily fits into my social sharing workflow seemlessly. What it allows me to do is to make sure I am consistently sharing links to my content, currently content up to 60 days old, and that I have more time to spend writing and reading other great content I find on the web. In conjunction with my process for archiving, curating and sharing content my WordPress blog has now become its own self promotion robot. And, who doesn’t like robots?

Learn even more cool stuff about WordPress

The post How to make your WordPress blog promote itself appeared first on Not Will Smith.

A sunny but brisk day. A freshly manicured lawn. Flowers meticulously laid out in a grid. Chirping birds.

Cemeteries are great places to think and draw inspiration from (there is also one across the street from where I work).

On a recent walk through the cemetery I was thinking about a particular web content challenge I was facing. Strange to have a thought about while walking through a field of cemetery markers perhaps, but I found there were many parallels to web content and those very stone markers left there in the earth, as well as some contrasts.

Web content gets old but doesn’t have to die

Unlike traditional marketing, web content has the benefit of being able to being brought back from the dead. Too many people write a blog post or article online, and then forget about it.

As I walked through the cemetery I noticed several people standing and talking near a gravestone. They were honoring the dead, or at least the memory of a loved one long since passed. Why don’t we do that with web content? When was the last time you went back and updated an old blog with new information? How about the last time you realized that something you wrote about was wrong?

Content wants to be shared and remembered

Why do we write things down? Sure, there are millions of right answers to this question. But don’t we write things down, in some part, to leave a legacy? We want people to remember us and our ideas. Long after I’m gone, I hope that my writings will available in some digital archive for people to read.

Bloggers may be motivated by monetizing their content online, but the really great ones (in my opinion) also want to make an impact. They want to change opinions. They want to inform. They want to use content to extend their voice.

The same way we read a great book and then recommend it to our friends (or if you are a really awesome friend, lend or buy them the book) so should we share great content. I honor other bloggers each week with my Best Digital Marketing Articles of the week collection. Curating content is a wonderful way to preserve the legacy of someone’s thoughts and ideas.

Be fearless when writing your content

One of my favorite quotes on life and death comes from Steve Jobs. While reflecting on his life while battling cancer, Jobs wrote:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

Sometimes I stress over what I am going to blog about here on my site. Will it be good enough to share with people? Will they find value? Do people care about these topics?

The answer of course is yes, there are people who want to learn about digital marketing out there. I talk to them every single day, whether at the office or via social media. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and venture out of your comfort zone a bit. After all, comfort and confidence aren’t mutually exclusive.  And if you have a take which is controversial, all the better! People are clamoring for interesting, original content, not boring re-hashed content.

Even more about content marketing

The post Where do you lay your content to rest? appeared first on Not Will Smith.

Every week I’ll share the best digital marketing articles I’ve read and shared on my social channels.  This week’s entries are from Amaryllis Fox writing at USA Today, Ben Kuchera at Penny Arcade, and Kris Krug. If you like these articles please support the authors by following them on Twitter or sharing their content.

Content is the new retail store

This article, written by Amaryllis Fox, elicited several reactions from me after reading it. On the one hand, it read like a product pitch for her company, Mulu Media, and their widget which helps content producers to monitize their sites. On the other hand, she drew a comparison to content on the web being essentially product catalogs (think about the Sears catalog).

Let’s face it, a large percentage of the blogs produced every day deal somehow with products or recommendations. I write on this site all the time about products I love – web video hosting from Wistia, search marketing tools from SEOMoz, just to name a few. I know for a fact that people read those endorsements and that there are some who have even purchased those services based on my recommendations. I don’t do it for money, but if I were so inclined, how would I?

Another question, not raised by the article by Amaryllis, is how do you keep content sites pure from being influenced by the almighty dollar? I guess you can’t, not really.

Follow @amaryllisfox

Ad-blockers, the games press, and why sexy cosplay galleries lead to better reporting

Perhaps the most comprehensive article written on how advertising affects content, this mammothly great post by Ben Kuchera at Penny Arcade is a must read. In it the economics of paid advertising on web sites is discussed, as well as how page views have become the measuring stick for which sites get advertising dollars and which don’t. All of this of course directly impacts the content choices for sites, which in turns effects editorial decisions.

The comments are great too!

Follow @BenKuchera

Is existing online a quest of loneliness or giving?

“We exist in a time where anyone can determine and create unique lives online, accountable to no one, yet visible to and dependent upon all. Digital extistentialism extends the sense of modernistic distress. There are so many red herrings and lost pursuits that distract. You can drug yourself digitally with almost any pursuit, and at the end find yourself nano-famous and alone.”

I had to quote this because it rings so true, not just for me but probably millions of others who seek to share what they know online. I’ve spent many hours wondering if writing long form articles on search, social, web design and the like are really helping anyone. Or, is my elaborate system for sharing my online content even being noticed? Numbers would indicate otherwise, but I still feel like it is worth the time and money.

Are the people with hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter actually happy with the influence they wield? Or do they feel, like me, that they spend their time shouting into a deep digital canyon with only echoes in response to their tweets?

Follow @kk

The post The Best Digital Marketing Articles – April 15, 2013 appeared first on Not Will Smith.

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So you have finally decided that you or your company needs a new web site. The process for building one though can be daunting, especially if you are undertaking the build yourself (or managing others to do it). What types of things should you consider before you begin? How will you measure success and if need be, how will you get buy in from your superiors to take on the expense of a new web site build?

Lets start with the basics

Do you need a brand new site or simply need to address issues with your current one?

Typically, an individual or company will refresh its web site every year or so. The reasons for this can be several-fold.

Perhaps you, as the marketing person or owner are just tired of seeing the same old site every day. Maybe your customers or other members of your organization have expressed a desire for a change.

You might also have noticed that what once looked like a modern, innovative web site design is now outdated by newer technologies and design trends.

Maybe there has been a dip in your sales or other important KPI’s which you measure success against for your site.

Whatever your reason for deciding on a new site or redesign of an existing one, you will want to take a methodical approach to your approach. Some of these considerations can be implemented without taking a wrecking ball to your existing site.

Step 1. Understand who your audience is

The most important reason to change your site or build a new one is to connect with the people who will be coming to it. Presumably, this will be your audience, which depending on your business may also be your customers. Who are these people and what are they motivated by?

Ruth Burr from SEOMoz recently recorded a White Board Friday talking about this which is too good not to embed here on my site. Make sure you watch this one!

Step 2. How easy is it to describe what you do?

This may seem simple, but being able to really define what service or product you provide is really important. Take a moment to stop reading and write down the answer to this question. Is your answer concise? Does it span more than a sentence or two? Can you explain it in 140 characters or less? If not, you may want to work on tightening it up.

Fhoke is a brand agency that caters to local and international clients. How much clearer and concise can you be? It is right there for you, large and bold when you visit their web site.

Twelve South makes awesome accessories just for Macs, including laptop stands, iPhone and iPad cases. Not only are they Mac friendly, they are Mac only.

Hubspot is an inbound marketing agency that offers a software as a service package for one-stop management of your digital marketing campaigns.

Step 3. Are there misconceptions about your service or product that you can address?

You may have gotten feedback from your customers (or read about it indirectly from social media postings or review sites) on issues or problems that your service or product has. Some of these issues can be real or imagined. In any case, it is always good to know up front how your audience thinks so you can address those objections or perceptions in your site content and headlines.

A perfect example: I work for a company that is a management company for private practice audiologists. A misconception that some people have when hearing about us is that we dictate to them how they run their business. But contrary to this belief, we don’t. We are partly owned by our customers and they retain full control over how their business is run. Adopting language on our site that conveys this (e.g. “We work for you”) is helpful in countering these notions.

If your product is perceived to be expensive (or it actually is) you may want to acknowledge all of the other benefits associated with it (higher quality, better warranty, etc) right from the outset and have that messaging be a part of your site planning and content strategy.

Step 4. What do you want from your site visitors?

What is the purpose of your web site and what would you like your visitors to do once they get there? Is it obvious? If not, why not? If you can’t answer this question then it is going to be nearly impossible for your visitors to. You may have an e-commerce site that also contains educational resources to teach your customer about how to use or why they would want a particular product. Make sure it is easy to find that information, particularly within 1 click.

If your site is a content based site (like this one) then make sure you give your visitors a “next step” to follow. You can do this through links within your content, but also in your sidebar content. After you have read this post, you may also be interested in a related one, for example.

Mailchimp makes email marketing easy for visitors to understand, see the product in action and take sign up for free, right on the home page.

Step 5. What do your visitors want from your site?

Similar, but often times different from Step 4 above, it is important to realize that just because you want a visitor to fill out an information request form or click buy on a shopping cart page, they might not be there for that purpose. This is where analytics comes in, whereby you can analyze how people move throughout your site and what they are specifically looking for. Google Analytics has a really useful report for determining this information, called Visitor Flow. It will let you know where visitors go, and where they leave from.

Google Analytics “Visitor Flow” report shows that my guides to search marketing as well as my post on Explaining SEO to Your Boss are among my most popular. Using this information can help me figure out the best way to get people through my site as well as what kind of content they would like to see when they get there.

So next time you decide to build a new site, take these considerations to heart. I guarantee that by considering your audience, your value proposition, proactively addressing misconceptions (or objections) and understanding both what your goals are, as well as those of your customers, you will be on your way to a highly effective web site.

Building a web site? Check out these posts!

The post 5 Considerations for Your Next Web Site Build appeared first on Not Will Smith.

Every week I’ll share the best digital marketing articles I’ve read and shared on my social channels.  This week’s entries are from Kendal Peiguss writing at Hubspot, Matt Drance at Apple Outsider, and Paul Koks at Online Behavior. If you like these articles please support the authors by following them on Twitter or sharing their content.

How to Recruit and Evaluate Rockstar Interns

Are you looking for some fresh new talent to join your organization? If so, consider hiring interns! But, as Kendal Peiguss writes for Hubspot, they are good for more than just getting your coffee. Because interns are typically younger and right out of school, they can often provide a fresh perspective on your marketing strategy. This awesome guide (and let’s face it, what Hubspot guide isn’t awesome?) walks you through sample interview questions, how to analyze responses and what to look for in your next intern.

Follow @kendalpeiguss

Home Turf

Apple Outsider’s Matt Drance expertly breaks down Facebook Home, and what it means for not only Apple but more importantly Google, who Facebook seems to have in their sights with this Android home screen replacement. Is Facebook Home designed to steal the Android user experience right out from under Google? And, is it a prelude to a full fledged Facebook mobile operating system?

Follow @appleoutsider

51 Tips to Succeed with Web Analytics

I’m a sucker for great big lists like this and Paul Koks delivers with these awesome tips for setting yourself up for success in web analytics. And, his advice isn’t all technical! “Write about what you love” and “learn to build a web site yourself” lead off the list, but as he notes it is also important to tag everything (you can’t track what you don’t tag). I highly recommend bookmarking this mega list for later!

Follow @onlinemetrics

The post The Best Digital Marketing Articles – April 8, 2013 appeared first on Not Will Smith.

Over the weekend I had the distinct honor and privilege of speaking at AudiologyNow 2013, a major conference for audiologists that this year was held at the Anaheim Convention Center. Over the course of 5 days I taught a total of 20 classes to attendees on social media marketing, both in marketing their practices as well as marketing themselves through social media.

And while I spoke to a very diverse group of audiologists, from private practice to students to those who work in hospitals, there was a common thread in the responses I received both during and after my training.

“I’d love to be more involved in social media, but I just don’t have the time.”

“Social media is scary and I am afraid of making a mistake!”

“All of this seems interesting, and I’d like to do it, but I don’t know where to start.”

Yes, for many there is actual fear when it comes to dipping their toe into those treacherous social media waters. There is a perception that being social requires a lot of time – much more than the average audiologist has after spending a full day treating patients.

The truth is that social media marketing does require time, but that if you manage the process can be accomplished in just mere minutes per day. Social media marketing is also scalable – you get what you put in, but if you just want to get initially started the time investment is low. You can spend all day posting content, sharing and interacting and that’s great, you will probably see results much quicker.

It isn’t about how much time you spend, but how consistent you are.

What I’ve found over the years is that success with social media marketing comes with consistency. Posting something every day or every other day, even if it is just an interesting link you found, an inspiring quote or maybe a photo, is better than posting a few times then leaving your social channels barren for a month (or longer).

There are great tools out there for helping you to become more consistent and efficient with your social media sharing. Buffer is one of my favorites but there are numerous tools available.

What I recommend is to plan out your tweets or Facebook posts for the week, however many you feel comfortable sharing. Perhaps decide on a topic you want to cover and share links or quotes or thoughts that support that idea. For me, I typically queue up some tweets on a topic of the month (this month it is personal branding) and make sure that I share links that talk on that topic. During my talk at AudiologyNow, I queued up tweets announcing when classes started, or shared quotes from my presentation that would draw conference attendees to come take one of my classes.

Who are you afraid of messing up in front of?

Another common concern is about making a mistake when you’re just getting started with social media marketing. Its true, when you post to your Twitter or Facebook feed you could say something stupid. And, those updates can usually be seen by the public.

But who are you afraid of messing up in front of? Before taking the time to actually setup an account on any of these sites you aren’t going to have anyone following you! Think of it like getting your house ready for a party. No one has showed up yet so you have plenty of time to get the Hors d’oeuvres and wine chilling. 

Pro tip: it is possible to hide your social presence until you’re ready to be seen. On Twitter you can “protect your updates” so that only people you have explicitly allowed to see them can. On Facebook, you can work on perfecting your Business Page in an unpublished mode.

Here are the two settings to look for when setting up your social media pages initially which will hide them until you are ready to make them live. Obviously, if you already have live accounts with followers.

Check this box to hide your Facebook page until you’re ready to show the world

Where do I start?

The answer to this really depends on what your objectives with social media marketing are, and your comfort level. Lets say you are a human resources pro and you want to use social to find and reach job seekers. I’d suggest really digging into Twitter or LinkedIn, both tremendously useful social networks for professional networking. If you are a small business owner and service provider, you probably would find Facebook a more appropriate starting point.

The presentation below (about 10 minutes long) will give you some practical tips for getting your start on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Learn even more about social media marketing!

The post Time, Fear and Confusion in Social Media Marketing appeared first on Not Will Smith.

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Every week I’ll share the best digital marketing articles I’ve read and shared on my social channels.  This week’s entries are from Seth Godin, John Doherty, and Mark Wilson! If you like these articles please support the authors by following them on Twitter or sharing their content.

Toward Zero Unemployment

Not a huge Seth Godin reader, but I came across this article in which he compared today’s workforce to that of the early industrial age. Back then (and up until somewhat recently) the economy was based on scarcity. Now, we have choices galore – in fact, abundance. And because of these choices, we now have to worry about things like trust, permission and remarkability. How will you as a marketer stand out?

Follow @thisissethsblog

In Praise of the Long Thought

John Doherty misses the days when we embraced long form content (and so do I). In our 140 characters or less world, too often we’re happy to get the headline and not the story. Also, John argues that the web site is no longer the hub for content – it lives everywhere, from our social channels to even our devices.

It’s a long post though (fitting) so bookmark it and take it in chunks!

Follow @dohertyjf

Your Lazy CoWorkers are Happier Than You Are

Studies show that people who underachieve at the office, come in late and shun working on weekends are actually happier. Who’d have thought? However, as Mark Wilson writes, the reasons for this aren’t as obvious.

Follow @ctrlzee

 

The post The Best Digital Marketing Articles – March 24, 2013 appeared first on Not Will Smith.