Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services. http://socialmention.com/
(Guest post by Mike Tanner) I recently (like, earlier today) had the pleasure of speaking to a room full of close to 50 people on a topic near and dear to my heart: podcasting. Now I’m not going to sit here and give you a recap of that talk. If you want the VERY basic details you can find them on my website but you’ll never recapture the magic that we all shared in that room that day... Instead, I’d like to talk about three questions that I was asked during the talk and how they relate to running your own business, podcasting or otherwise. How Much Do You Charge Someone To Sponsor a Podcast? Pricing is complicated. It’s a fact. Ask anyone who does consulting or coaching or training or anything where there’s not a defined cost or supply and demand issue, and they will tell you that pricing is one of the most difficult things to figure out. Whether you’re trying to figure out how to price your course or how much to charge for web copy or how much to charge a sponsor to be a...
Every time I do online research, I find broken things. I'm curious; I like to see how things work. And it's quite amazing how many times I find things that don't work, or don't work well. I'm not just talking about small business websites - even big brands fail sometimes. The thing is, big brands usually have a reputation which leads people to forgive or ignore more easily. I've written before about how important it is to audit your website at least quarterly. (I pay someone to do it for me and it's well worth it.) If you haven't done a website audit recently, now is a great time. Here are a handful of specific things to check. Is your website doing these things well? Be really clear about the benefits to potential customers and put that front and centre. More money and more time are great - but how much? Read and test everything yourself. Don't rely on what others tell you. I've seen a lot of non-functional website forms and suc...
Nine hundred million people use Facebook Messenger as a primary messaging tool. Do you think a few of those would rather receive your newsletter that way - on their phone instead of in their inbox? And wouldn't it be great to give them the option? Now you can build a contact list and distribute your newsletter by Messenger. Here are nine reasons to do that: #1. People tend to have a Messenger account longer than they have an email address. When people change jobs, they will likely get a new email address but will continue to use the same Messenger account throughout their lives. #2. Give your readers a choice of how they want to receive your information. Some of those 900,000,000 people are your customers and fans. #3. Higher open rates - industry leaders are saying 80% is typical. #4. The timing of delivering your newsletter becomes a little less important than with email newsletters. (e.g. it's less important to deliver during working hours) #5. Se...
photo by MNicoleM When it comes to marketing, the experts say, “It’s not about you!” It’s something we always emphasize with our new clients, too, when discussing their newsletter content strategy . While your content may not be about you, how you execute your strategy is ALL about you. With all the tools we have at our disposal, there is no excuse for spelling errors, broken links or crappy clip-art. You wouldn't go meet with a potential new client without brushing your hair and teeth. Your marketing content needs hygiene, too. Click to Tweet this Article
A wrap-up article is a logical and unique grouping of pieces of content where the grouping provides value to the reader beyond the individual pieces on their own. You might think of it like a themed gift basket. There are several reasons we need to be creating these wrap-up articles. They... serve as a great resource - valuable information grouped together use commonly searched keywords and phrases (good SEO) encourage deeper reading are often faster to create provide a process to repurpose past content remind us of what we've written and provide inspiration to write more Wrap-up articles serve us better than just about any other content we might create. Of course, we have to be creating content on a regular basis to be able to wrap it up. There are lots of different ways to group pieces of content : by topic - e.g. content idea generation, writing tips by use - e.g. how-to, conceptual, tips by thing - e.g. infographics, videos by user - e.g. for begi...
PHOOEY on that, I say! I’m tired of hearing that to use Twitter ‘properly’ you have to be there to have conversations. Apparently some people have no problem being there 16 hours a day. Those are the Twitter divas… the ones who look down their noses at the rest of us who can only spare a half hour a day from our busy schedules to have these deep conversations. They’re also the people who have found a way to make money by being on Twitter. Or they’re unemployed and have nothing better to do with their time? Anyone with a REAL job surely can’t spare all that time. These Twitter divas assume that the rest of us are there for the same reasons they are. And if we’re not, maybe we’re supposed to be somewhere else? See, not everyone I want to connect with is on Twitter during that specific half hour I can spend there every day. Even if I spend 2 half hours, I’m still not going to reach very many people. Let’s get real. How many people can you have deep conversations with in a half hour ...
You've just finished editing (and proofing!) your latest blog post. You pause for a mental happy dance, then you click Publish. Ahh. And now the rest of the work starts. Because, of course, you need to let people know about this new useful and interesting article you've just laboured over. You'll want to share your new article out on your social media feeds multiple times, especially when it's new, and then tapering off over the coming months. And to be efficient about it, you'll want to schedule all of those posts now. So let's start writing the text for those social media posts. What will tease people into clicking and reading? (I'm not talking about lying; teasing is good marketing.) You can write your teaser from scratch. But the fastest thing is to do is to copy text snippets directly from your blog post. That is usually what I do for my own posts. And it's often when I realize I could have done a better writing job. I could have writ...
Did you hear the one about the guy who protested the new Canadian anti-spam regulations? He started an email campaign and spammed thousands. No word of lie. Spamhaus responded via their Block Listing for the fellow’s IP address: IP is sending spam to scraped email addresses or purchased list. Spam asks recipient to sign petition against Canadian antispam law FISA. Is OK to protest law--even law we at Spamhaus think is good law. Is not OK to spam to protest law, or for any other reason. Spamhaus is an international non-profit that tracks the Internet's spam sources, provides real time anti-spam protection for Internet networks, works with Law Enforcement Agencies to identify and pursue spam and malware gangs, and lobbies governments for effective anti-spam legislation. Those of us who are doing legitimate business by email in Canada have no need to be concerned at all about the new regulations. If you have been following email marketing best practices, and using a bulk ...
If you're beating around the bush, you're wasting time and possibly money. Neil Everton of Podium Media and Communications Coaching suggests we look at our writing with a critical eye and ask: "Am I prepared to pay $1 for every word I've written?" Unproductive words and phrases abound. I've written before about wimpy phrases to avoid ; here are some slightly pretentious ones to also slice out. “Due to the fact that...” Use “because” at the beginning, or rearrange the sentence to use it in the middle. “For the most part...” Eliminate this one completely without changing your meaning. “In my opinion...” Use “I think” or eliminate it all together. I'm already expecting your opinion if I'm reading your writing. “On a regular basis...” Save $3 here by using “regularly” or “always” at the end of the sentence instead. “The first step is to...” Chop out 4 words and simply use “first”. Using more words doesn't mean you'll get read...
When it comes to writing articles for your blog or newsletter, what's your stumbling block ? Perhaps it's... coming up with ideas adapting your ideas for writing starting to write finishing writing editing and proofing finding or creating graphics keywords and publishing If you can identify where you get hung up, you can find a solution! Click to Tweet this Article
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