Prismatic: A Great Social Media and Discovery Tool (and My New Addiction)

I spend a heckuva lot of time everyday searching for and reading the latest news and opinions on project management, content marketing, the economy, higher education and several other topics that are near and dear to my heart. While I love the actual "reading" and "discussion" parts of my day, the "searching" part can be enormously frustrating. Sure, I get a lot of great recommendations from people on Twitter and Google+, and Alltop is an awesome tool that helps me manage feeds from my favorite publishers, but I also like finding new authors and sites.

Of course, I'm greedy enough to want to be able to do all of those things with one tool. When hearing about some new social media or media discovery tool, I used to rush to check it out. Unfortunately, most of the time I was disappointed -- not because the new apps were bad, but because generally, they performed the same functions as the ones I was already using. So, when I first received an invitation to try Prismatic a while back, I simply filed it and figured I'd take a look when and if I had time.

About a week or so ago, I heard some others praising Prismatic and remembered the invitation so I decided to go ahead and take a look for myself. And, WOW, I sure do wish I had checked it out sooner. It's really both a social media and a media discovery tool. It links up to your Twitter account and uses info from there to help give initial recommendations for topics and publishers you might like, but it also has a global search tool so you can dig down into any topic you want. I'm including a screenshot below so you can get an idea of what the interface looks like.

Prismatic also lets you save topics and specific publishers to your Interests list, favorite stories so you read them later, see recent tweets that have been made about each story, tweet the article yourself, find related stories -- well, in short, it does almost everything I want to do. I still use HootSuite to help me schedule certain items and track results, but I've replaced almost all of the other apps I was using in the past with Prismatic. If you haven't tried it out for yourself yet, I highly recommend it -- and, let us know what you think!

Why You Should Be Using LinkedIn

I’m a big fan of LinkedIn and you should be too. Forget about the inconvenient line on Facebook between work and life, or the need to have multiple Twitter accounts to cater for different niches. With LinkedIn you are on a purely professional platform where the aim is to network and promote yourself. There are groups for discussions and advice on all kinds of industries, there are job listings and tips galore, and there are lots of like-minded professionals looking to connect. 


Best of all LinkedIn serves as your online resume which is ideal for freelancers of any type. It is a free advert for your services that you can optimize and promote. If you do it right then the work will come to you. This infographic does a great job of showing off what LinkedIn is all about. So don’t delay, come and join me on LinkedIn.




How LinkedIn Works by Infographiclabs

Beta of Really Cool Social Media Tool

Yesterday, I had a demo of a social media tool I thought I'd share with everyone.  It has a lot of potential, and they are making some great investments in its growth.

Everyone knows how difficult it is it to compose a tweet.  You'd think with only 140 characters, it should be a breeze.  But with hashtags, mentions, retweets, and shortened URL's, it takes me like an hour to do a good one!  Okay, well slight exaggeration, but you get the picture.

You can definitely do the autopost strategy.  But you're really not inserting your own original thoughts into the tweet.  So how effective is that on a long-term basis?  You're also not leveraging any of the hashtags or tweet targeting tools out there.

This company, Mashoutable, is trying to change all that with their easy to use tool.  It allows you to construct tweets with a few clicks of a button incorporating data from your own twitter feed, followers, and what's trending out there.

Join their Beta, and make sure you give them lots of feedback:
http://mashoutable.com/

Have fun!

Yes! You Do Need a Company Blog

The most accessible way to dip your toe in the waters of content marketing is to start a company blog. It’s a tactic that can work for any size of business and if you do it right then it will generate targeted traffic that would otherwise cost you a lot of advertising dollars to pull in. According to HubSpot research more than half of all Internet users read blogs at least once a month and more than one third of U.S. companies use blogs for marketing purposes.

The potential value of blogs is definitely being recognised. According to the Content Marketing Institute blogs are one of the most popular content marketing tactics and while 51% of marketers used blogs in 2010 that figure went up to 65% in 2011.

Easy To Set Up

One of the big attractions of starting a company blog is that it is relatively easy. Not only can you find plenty of free platforms, from WordPress to Blogger, they also have CMS (content management systems) on the back end that anyone can learn to use. This makes it easy to add users, and to create, schedule and publish content. It’s worth noting that a solution like WordPress is probably the most attractive because you can host the blog yourself and assimilate it into your existing website.

7 Reasons To Start a Company Blog

You company blog should be the foundation of your content marketing efforts. It can act as a central hub for all of your marketing activity. That’s just the beginning, because blogs are a great idea for a number of reasons. Let’s take a closer look at the big advantages.

1. Increase in Traffic – According to the same HubSpot research mentioned above, companies that blog get 55% more website visitors.
2. Targeted Traffic – Not only does the blog pull in more traffic, it also pulls in targeted traffic with an interest in what you are selling. HubSpot reports that 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog.
3. Cheaper Than Advertising – To get that targeted traffic through traditional advertising channels would be far more expensive.
4. You Own The Blog – The blog is owned by the company so there is no reliance on a third-party or time limit on its effectiveness.
5. Blogs Establish Thought Leadership – What better way to show off your industry expertise than by writing useful and insightful blog posts?
6. Blogs Feed Social Media – People love sharing great content and they are far more likely to share something from your business website if it is perceived as useful.
7. You Can Post Any Kind of Content – There are no real limitations with blog posts. You can post photos, artwork, audio or video files along with text in various forms from casual blog posts to in-depth articles and beyond to white papers.

As you can see there are plenty of reasons to maintain a company blog and it is undoubtedly one of the most cost effective strategies you can pursue when it comes to promoting your business. If you do intend to start a company blog then you must realise that it is a commitment. We have discussed classic content marketing mistakes before and posting the wrong kind of content or not updating your company blog regularly are just two relevant examples.

Next week we’ll take a look at how to make a company blog work with some useful tips you can implement for blogging success. 

What Do You Think of Visually's Infographic Creation Tools?

If you're an infographic junkie like me, you've probably heard of Visually -- a great site with tons of infographics and infovideos on almost every subject imaginable. Not only is Visually an awesome source for information, it's also a terrific site to browse when you're looking for design and content inspiration.

A few weeks ago, Visually rolled out the first stage of its instant infographic creation tools. When I heard the announcement, I immediately rushed to the site to check the new feature out. Unfortunately, it seemed that I wasn't the only one looking forward to this addition. At that time, when I was trying to test out the creation tools, the site kept hanging or sending error messages back to me -- probably because so many people were trying to access it at once.

Although I did manage to test the tools a bit that day, I finally decided to wait with intentions of going back later when all the initial kinks and traffic issues had been worked out. Of course, we all know how that goes. With so many other things on my plate, I forgot completely about testing the tools again until this week.

However, I did manage to find an hour to play around with the infographic creation app yesterday, and I can definitely see the potential. Right now, the options are still fairly limited and you can only create a handful of different infographics, all of which utilize Twitter or Facebook data. So, while the customization potential currently isn't that great, I can still see how a lot of potential for this application -- especially if Visually continues to develop it and incorporate new features.

As an example, for one of the infographic options, all you have to do is enter a Twitter hashtag. Then, after a few seconds of processing time, you'll wind up with an infographic that gives information about that hashtag's performance over the last month. Here's the result for the hashtag #contentmarketing:

If you've tried out the tool, what do you think of it? What features would you love to see added?

Why Did Facebook Splurge $1 Billion on Instagram?

So what do you think about Facebook’s purchase of Instagram? They paid $1 billion for a two-year old photo sharing network with no profits. If you’re not familiar with Instagram it is an app, originally released for the iPhone back in October 2010. It allows users to apply 17 different filters to their photos and upload them to a website where they can be shared and discussed.

With over 30 million downloads there is no doubting its popularity. When they released the Android version of the app last week it was downloaded more than 1 million times in 12 hours. With more than 5 million new photos being added every day and a celebrity user base that includes Justin Bieber and the President, not to mention big brands like MTV and Burberry, this is clearly more than a photo filter app.

Facebook is already the most popular photo-sharing service in the world, with more than 250 million images uploaded daily. So why would Facebook splash out the largest amount paid for a profitless start up since Google bought YouTube?

Instagram is a social network for sharing photos. Beyond the popularity and behind the accessibly simple façade there is quite a lot going on. Instagram offers some new features in the shape of their fun filters and, perhaps more importantly, access to an efficient and highly usable mobile app service. Facebook also removes a potential competitor and ensures that no one else buys them. Win-win.

We’ll just have to wait and see how long it takes for Instagram’s features to be rolled into Facebook. Is it a smart move by Zuckerburg and co, or does it suggest a certain amount of insecurity?

Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads: Which Are You More Likely to Click?

The other day I was telling a friend about a video hosting site that I’m planning to sign up with, and one of the first things she asked was, “How did you hear about it?”

I’ll be honest. I had to stop and think about that question for a few minutes, and trace back in my mind to the first time I heard about the service. I knew that I had been receiving a weekly newsletter-type email from the company for a while so I must have given it my address at some point. I thought a little more and remembered that I had entered my email address in order to gain access to an instructional video that I wanted to watch. But what had led me to that web page with the instructional video? Oh yeah! It was a Facebook ad.

To be fair, I fully recognize that it was the company’s awesome content marketing strategy that kept the brand active in my mind and finally converted me. But, it’s hard to say how long it would have taken me to find the hosting service – or if I ever would have found it at all – if I had not seen the original Facebook ad.

This made me start thinking more about Facebook ads in general, and how I’m far more likely to click on them than Google ads. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I clicked on a Google ad. Despite the amazing amount of data that Google must have about me, Google ads rarely seem relevant or interesting. On the other hand, many of the ads I see on my Facebook page are very relevant to my current interests and, of course, that makes me quite likely to click them.

So, at least in my particular case, it seems like Facebook does a far better job at matching advertisements to my true interests than Google does, but I’m very curious about what type of experience other people are having. What about you? Do you think you’re more likely to click on a Facebook ad or a Google ad?

Image Credit: PhotoSpin/graja

7 Classic Content Marketing Mistakes

Content marketing has really taken off. According to the ContentMarketing Institute 9 out of 10 organizations employ some kind of content marketing strategy. The most popular plan is to produce articles and blogs related to your business and engage with existing and potential customers through social media. It doesn’t work for everyone and that’s mainly because a lot of people don’t really understand the idea behind content marketing in the first place. So what can go wrong?

Listen To My Sales Pitch

The idea of marketing is to increase sales…right? All marketing must have a call to action or how will I ever convert…right? Wrong! Forget about focussing on what you get out of it and focus on what the potential customer gets out of it. The idea behind content marketing is that you offer the potential customer something useful - something that solves a problem for them. How often do you read lengthy sales pitches? Do you enjoy self-referential advertorial pieces that are clearly designed to persuade you to buy? No, and neither does anyone else.

The American Marketing Association defines marketing like this -

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

The word you need to pick out of that sentence is value. If you don’t offer some value then your content marketing efforts will fail.

We Don’t Need Professional Writers

Everyone can write can’t they? Why should we spend money on a professional when we can get the intern to do it? Well the truth is – you get what you pay for. A well briefed, professional copy writer will produce quality content that will serve you for months or even years. A badly written, awkward, or even grammatically incorrect article, will turn people away, discourage trust and harm your brand.

If you were going to redesign your reception area, or create a new look for your website you wouldn’t ask your existing staff to do it - you would hire a professional. The same thing applies to your content.

I Can’t Be Bothered This Week

If you want to show off great knowledge of your industry then a regular blog is a fantastic way to highlight that. You can display your company’s thought leadership, enhance your reputation and encourage people to visit regularly.

The main problem with company blogs is that they don’t have a proper editorial calendar. As soon as the office is busy the first thing that gets ditched is the company blog (especially if you assign it to staff – see above). To get value from your blogging efforts you need to do it regularly and you need to maintain a high standard. You should also understand that it takes time to gain traction through content marketing. It’s not something that will work over night.

Quantity Over Quality

Sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of content - it’s an overabundance of content. You don’t want three separate blogs a day (one on the coffee machine, one on what you saw on the way to work and just one about your actual business), along with an infographic, a podcast and a new white paper. You want to produce quality content, leverage that content and promote it properly. Give it room to breathe and find an audience, and then rinse and repeat.

SEO, SEO and SEO

We have optimized the hell out of this copy. Our target keywords are scattered optimally, the headers are perfect and we’re ranking high in the search results. Why isn’t it resulting in more sales?

There’s no denying that SERP rankings are important. You want to rank as high as possible in the search engines for search terms that relate to your product. You also want to ensure that the people who land on your page actually get what they came for. Fluff content, keyword stuffing and a lack of engaging or useful information is never going to please customers. Even if you can “game” search engines to get them there in the first place they will leave pretty quickly and they won’t come back.

Search engines are getting better and better at spotting hollow content and people are wise to SEO over substance. Don’t forget about SEO in your content marketing but remember it is only part of the picture. Quality content is the most important thing.

How Does It Relate?

We’ve already discussed why SEO isn’t enough but it’s also worth mentioning that great content isn’t enough. You could write the best analysis of mortgage types or the greatest review of that movie you watched last night but if your business sells suitcases then it won’t do you any good. It might pull in loads of traffic but if it doesn’t relate to your business in some way then how is it going to boost your business? That traffic will never convert to sales and it won’t hang around to read the rest of your content.

The idea with content marketing is to offer value in your business area. Establish your credentials, build some trust in potential customers that you know what you’re talking about and the idea that your service or product is worth a look will naturally follow.

Relying On Social Media

The idea that social media is the golden ticket to every marketer’s dream – a steady supply of free leads – may be flawed. You could have 20,000 followers on Twitter but how many of them click the links you post and read the content? You might be sucking in 10,000 unique visitors a day from Stumble Upon but how does that traffic convert?

The truth is that social media is a commitment and if you don’t invest properly then you won’t get anything back. There are a lot of ways to build a following on Twitter and you can submit your content to Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit and everyone else, but if you want targeted traffic you need a strategy. You don’t need to pull in thousands of people every day – you need to pull in the people who are actually seeking your services or product and are ready to buy. Don’t be fooled by big numbers – focus on the traffic that is actually converting.

Plan Your Content Marketing Strategy and Then Execute

These are just seven classic content marketing mistakes that many businesses make. The truth is there are many more ways you can go wrong. There also isn’t a definite recipe for success. Every business is different. That’s why you need to take time to analyse your business and plan a content marketing strategy that will work for you. Focus on what you expect it to achieve and then plan it carefully before you actually begin.

Got any other content marketing mistakes in mind? Post a comment and share.