30-Minute Social Media Marketing Free Bonus Chapter Second Edition
Want to get a free 30-day social media marketing jumpstart plan? That’s exactly what’s included in the exclusive bonus chapter from my book, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, and an updated second edition is now available.
The free chapter (which is not in the book) includes daily tasks so you can get your social media presence up and running effectively and start moving toward reaching your goals in one month.
Just click the link (or the image) to read the free bonus chapter of 30-Minute Social Media Marketing right now.
If you have a copy of 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, you’ll find references to the chapters that correspond with each task throughout the 30-Day Social Media Marketing Challenge bonus chapter, so it’s easy to get details, tips, and help when you need it.
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn Now Available
Last month, my ninth book was published — The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn
While this book is intended for LinkedIn beginners, it includes far more information about using LinkedIn as part of a career and business growth plan than typical “beginner” books offer. For example, you’ll learn how to establish a powerful LinkedIn presence, attract a following, promote yourself, your business, or your brand, and reach your goals.
I’m a marketer, so even the books that I write about technology always have a heavy focus on using technology to grow a business or personal brand. LinkedIn can be a powerful social media marketing tool, which is just one of the primary messages I tried to communicate in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn. The book is broken down into five main parts:
- Part 1: Carving out Your Space on LinkedIn
- Part 2: Building Your Reputation and Community
- Part 3: Marketing Yourself Through LinkedIn
- Part 4: Using LinkedIn for Job Searching and Hiring
- Part 5: Analyzing and Retooling Your LinkedIn Strategy
A lot of people have LinkedIn Profiles, but only a small percentage of LinkedIn members truly leverage all the features and opportunities that LinkedIn provides. My goal in writing The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn was to show readers how useful the most popular professional social networking site can truly be in helping them reach their career and business goals.
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to LinkedIn is on sale in paperback for just $13.63 right now on Amazon, and an ebook version is available for devices like the Amazon Kindle
What’s So Great About Social TV?
Social TV is the hot topic in marketing circles this days, and there is a good reason for all the hype. Social TV is the next step in the evolution of broadcast and online marketing.
First, what is social TV?
In simplest terms, social TV is the marriage of television and digital communications. Research shows that more and more people watch TV while simultaneously using their mobile devices. TV becomes social when people publish updates and discuss a program on Twitter, Facebook, and other social sites as they’re watching that program on television.
For example, have you watched television shows and noticed a Twitter hashtag in the lower right-hand corner of your TV screen? That hashtag invites people to tweet about the program as they’re watching it. People don’t have to be in the same room to communicate about what appears on their television screens anymore. They can follow hashtags on Twitter and converse with people around the world.
Social TV is most often found during live programming, but there is growing interest in integrating social elements into recorded programs as well. For example, Simon Dumenco of Advertising Age spoke with Zane Vella, CEO of Watchwith, who explained, “We’re creating a world where every frame of TV is rich in possibilities.”
Zane’s company creates data bubbles each second, which display what its backend database “knows” about each scene. For example, during “The Big Bang Theory” a character could walk into a room with a backpack and the Watchwith database instantly feeds information about that specific product to social TV apps. Consumers who like that backpack can search for it, get more information, discuss it, and purchase it as they’re watching the show.
Social TV is the next big opportunity for brands and marketers, but finding ways to integrate social TV without annoying consumers will be a challenging balancing act. I’ll be at Mashable Connect 2012 in May, and social TV is the hot ticket at this year’s conference. Everyone wants to learn more about it and strategize new ways to effectively integrate it into their marketing plans. If you’re not already thinking about social TV, then you’re missing a significant opportunity!
Image: Nicholas J. Briscoe
5 Lessons “The Hunger Games” Teaches Marketers
Recently, I wrote an article for Forbes about the five lessons marketers can learn from The Hunger Games. At first glance, The Hunger Games is simply a young adult fiction novel, but when you look deeper, the story offers a wide variety of lessons that readers can apply to their own lives — including marketers!
These lessons aren’t groundbreaking or earth-shattering, but they are easy to forget in our busy day-to-day lives, particularly for marketers who are constantly required to put numbers before customers. In a world of data analysis paralysis, marketers sometimes need to be reminded of the basic lessons The Hunger Games can teach, including:
- Focus on your brand strengths.
- Be flexible.
- Build relationships.
- Remember that your brand identity is essential.
- Fancy imagery and messages without substance will lose in the end.
You can get all the details in my article on the Forbes website. The most important takeaway is this — survival depends on your ability to understand your environment (including your customers and competitors), adapt, and use your strengths to win. Those are lessons Katniss Everdeen applied in The Hunger Games, and marketers should apply them to business and brand building, too.
Have you read The Hunger Games? What lessons did you learn from the story? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: goodncrazy
KeySplash Creative CEO Susan Gunelius Wins Best Blog Award at 2011 Stevie Awards for Women in Business
On Friday evening, November 11, 2011, I attended the 8th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business where I received the award for Best Blog for WomenOnBusiness.com.
This is a blog I began in 2007 as a place to give women in business a place to demonstrate their thought leadership and share their expertise related to all business topics. I was thrilled to accept the award on behalf of the volunteer contributors who help make the site the authoritative online community that it is. The full press release is here.
The Stevie Awards for Women in Business recognize and honor women around the world in executive and entrepreneurial roles as well as the companies they lead. The Stevie Awards have been called the world’s premier business awards and referred to as the “Oscar Awards for business” by the New York Post. The 24 karat gold and crystal statues awarded to winners are crafted by the same company that makes the iconic Academy Award statues.
The 2011 Stevie Awards ceremony was attended by 300 finalists chosen from over 1,300 applications and benfitted Camfed (camfed.org), which fights poverty and HIV/AIDS in Africa by educating girls and empowering women to become leaders of change.
The complete 2011 award recipients list is available on the Stevie Awards website.
Quality vs. Quantity – The Truth about Twitter, Facebook, and Social Media Followers
I’ve been having so many conversations about the importance of focusing on the quality of your social media followers lately, that I thought it would be a good idea to share an excerpt from my book, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing
“There is a widely held belief that it’s important to get as many people to follow you on Twitter as possible in order to build your business. While it’s true that a large audience of followers raises the chances that more people will see your content and share it with their audiences, giving you potential exposure to an audience you couldn’t reach alone, using Twitter to build your business is truly about quality of followers, not quantity.
“Many people join Twitter and seek out as many people to follow as possible under the mistaken assumption that those people will reciprocate and follow in return. However, blindly following people who aren’t interested in your business won’t help you any more than untargeted advertising would.
“It’s better to have 1,000 highly interested followers than 10,000 followers who don’t care about you or your tweets. Remember, the goal of social media marketing, including using Twitter as a marketing tool, is to build relationships, particularly with people who are invested in your business and are likely to become your advocates. In other words, tweeting to 10,000 people who ignore you is a waste of time, but tweeting to 1,000 people who find value in your tweets can lead to direct and indirect sales.
“Don’t be tempted to follow anyone and everyone on Twitter, and don’t be swayed into thinking that Twitter profiles with large lists of followers are truly the most popular and powerful. Always think of quality over quantity when it comes to using Twitter as a marketing tool. Slow growth in quality Twitter followers trumps fast growth in quantity of Twitter followers when it comes to business growth that will last.”
– Excerpt from ’30-Minute Social Media Marketing’ (McGraw-Hill, 2010)
Remember, social media offers businesses the opportunity to move away from marketing on a one-to-many basis to marketing on a one-to-few or one-to-one basis. Leverage that opportunity by pursuing quality relationships with followers who value the content you publish and are capable of delivering long-term, sustainable, and organic growth to your business.
Susan Gunelius of KeySplash Creative Named Finalist in Stevie Awards for Women in Business
I’m happy to announce some exciting news for KeySplash Creative. We’ve been named as a finalist for two Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Following is an excerpt from the press release:
Susan Gunelius, KeySplash Creative, Inc. President and CEO, was named a Finalist for a Lifetime Achievement Award in the in the 8th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Susan’s popular blog, WomenOnBusiness.com, was also named a 2011 Stevie Awards Finalist in the Best Blog category. This is the third year in a row that WomenOnBusiness.com has been nominated for a Stevie Award and the third time the blog has been named an award finalist.
The Stevie Awards for Women in Business honor women executives, entrepreneurs, and the companies they run – worldwide. The Stevie Awards have been called the world’s premier business awards, and being named a finalist among over 1,300 entries is a significant accomplishment.
2011 Stevie Award winners will be announced at a special event to be held on November 11th at New York’s Marriott Marquis Hotel. The awards ceremony will be broadcast live on radio in the United States by the Business TalkRadio Network.
“Being named a finalist in the 2011 Stevie Awards for Women in Business is a great honor,” said Gunelius, “and it’s a testament to the importance of the work women in the business world do every day,” I’m very proud to be included in the group of inspiring women who make up the 2011 Stevie Awards Finalists.”
Details about the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the list of finalists in all categories are available at www.stevieawards.com/women.
Click to read the full press release
How to Write Content for an Online Audience that Scans – Quickly
The online audience moves very quickly, and if you don’t catch their attention within a couple of seconds, you’ve lost your opportunity to connect with them. Social media marketing and content marketing require a different form and style of writing to communicate messages than traditional marketing.
Fortunately, there are some simple steps that can help you learn how to write content that not only gets noticed but also gets read in its entirety. Keep in mind, when it comes to online content, people skim and scan. Therefore, “read in its entirety” refers to motivating a person to actually skim through your entire piece of content to get the complete message. While it would be wonderful if every person who stumbled on your content on the web read every word, that’s not the reality. Go for scannability!
Following are several tips to get you started in the right direction:
1. Spend Time Creating a Great Headline
Create a killer headline that intrigues and offers the promise of useful or entertaining information. Often the headline is all people see on sites like Twitter and Facebook, so it needs to motivate people to click through and read your complete content.
2. Start Strong
Begin with your most important message. There is no time for pretty introductions. Get to the point and then offer supporting information.
3. Keep It Short
The online audience typically prefers quick-hitting content (remember, they like to move fast) over lengthy content.
4. Use Headings
Make your content even more scannable by using headings and sub-headings gratuitously.
5. Use Bullets and Numbered Lists
Break up text heavy pages and make your content more scannable by using lists.
6. Use Images
Sometimes people just look at the pictures in order to decide if they even want to scan a piece of online content. Tell part of your story through the images you publish with your content to intrigue your audience.
Image: len-k-a
How to Break Free of the Text Messaging Bonds that Limit Your Mobile Marketing
In my newest article on Entrepreneur.com, I offer 5 tips for mobile marketing beyond text messages.
In simplest terms, text messages can still be effective, but if the only way you’re marketing your business to the mobile audience right now is through text message ads, then you’re severely limiting your potential.There is just so much more you can be doing to grow your business through mobile marketing!
Today, businesses can connect with the growing mobile audience through mobile websites, geo-targeted apps, mobile content, and quick response codes (QR codes).
Don’t develop your mobile marketing plan until you read my 5 mobile marketing tips and learn about some of the other effective ways to market your business, brand, products, and services to the mobile audience.
Image: jetmedia
Comic Con and the Story of Brand Evolution
Remember when the annual Comic Con convention was a place where die-hard comic book fans gathered to geek out about their favorite characters and storylines? How times have changed.
Comic Con officially kicks of in San Diego today, and the cast of players has changed radically in recent years. Who would have thought back in the day that the big draws to Comic Con attendance and press would include movies like Twilight?
The die-hard Comic Con brand loyalists aren’t as quick to embrace the brand’s expansion to broader audiences than the conference leaders and sponsors would hope. However, steps have been taken to appease the most loyal and emotionally connected Comic Con audience. With smaller conferences held throughout the year that are focused on niche audiences, Comic Con is trying to find the right balance between satisfying loyal brand advocates who will keep supporting the brand long after Twilight fades away and the extended audience that brings money and buzz to the annual conference.
What do you think? Has Comic Con extended too far or is the brand expansion necessary? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
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