Miley Cyrus on image creation and reputation management

Hi people! :)

It`s been days...I know. Blame dissertation, flat hunting and weekend.:) I was going to share some serious stuff with you, but after this 'Miley Cyrus rocking the Internet with her VMA performance' situation I thought I should just tell you what I think...and I have like so many thoughts!:)

This morning I came across memes and articles on how this performance reached thousands of Tweets in one minute. My colleague shared with me a link with feminist perspective on what happened and a blog post on content marketing lessons to learn from this story. All of this was interesting, however, I thought of a different angle from which this Miley Cyrus thing can be used to provide some useful tips. There we go:

Reputation vs Image = Hannah Montana vs Miley Cyrus

I remember lecturers on the PR courses I attended a couple of years ago told as: image a photo - look that can be captured in one particular moment, so every person can have different images every day - hipster, punk, lady, glamorous and so on. Whilst the reputation is something consisting of many images, just like a photoalbum. Therefore, a person can be dressed differently and wear different make up, but all of this influence of the reputation in more long-term perspective. Similarly, brand and business may sell and produce various products and services, but all of this works towards the reputation they have in the eyes of the customers. Bad reputation is something that almost equals death to a business (or at least a noticeable crisis), so reputation has to be looked after.

In Miley-Cyrus-VMA-performance context, the image is something she created by producing those weird moves in her 'daring' outfit surrounded by rather creepy teddy bears or whatever it was. No, no I am not the one to judge, I am doing 'marketing approach' here, so let's just accept the whole performance and think of the message behind it. It was already written in one of the articles I referenced above, that one way to interpret this situation is as if it was meant to be 'a brave way to attract Twitter followers' and create social media buzz. In this sense, the performance was really successful. 

On the other hand, I (and assumingly a decent part of the audience) would describe that performance as a way to get rid of the lovely-cute-childish-innocent Hannah Montana character following her whatever Miley does. Well, and here is where the concepts of image and reputation come into play. Firstly, that is where all the negative comments arrive - people just do not understand what all of those moves have to do with the precious teenagers series pop star.

Secondly, You just cannot change the whole reputation by one image or in this case performance? Or..can you? Obviously you can, but only in a bad way. They say that customers and clients are not very likely to immediately express their loyalty and provide brands with trust credits, because it takes years to impress and make them fall in love with your products, but one 'bikini-sticked-out-tongue and supposed-to-be-sexy-moves' can totally ruin it for your business. I mean, it is not like you are going to shock your store visitors in this way or something, but say you decided to make a re-branding with completely different messages or started targeting a new audience, or launched a not so good product or simply argued on the phone with your frequent customer, and that is it. There is not so many ways to win the loyality back. Unfortunately...

To conclude, if Miley Cyrus wants to grow from Hannah to the more Gaga-like celebrity or follow  +badgalriri steps, one-performance image is not enough. Can`t wait to see what`s coming next. You rock it girl! :)

XoXo

Content marketing and 2 sociological principles

Aloha! :)

I could not feel happier after my last meeting with the dissertation supervisor, fall in love with sociology even more and decided to write something very academic today. So here are some thoughts on the content marketing.

In one of her recent articles Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School Anita Elberse suggested the two principles formulated by sociologist William McPhee on consumer behaviour, to work in Digital Media environment today as perfectly as they did 50 years ago. The first principle claims the most popular products to only attract ‘light’ consumers or those who are not ‘the biggest fans of your brand‘, but simply buy it occasionally. The second principle, in McPhee words, is that ‘the larger the proportion of the people [unfamiliar] with a given alternative, the less likely are those who are familiar with it to like it especially’ (says McPhee).

When applied into digital realities, you will see that niche products are less rated and appreciated than popular ones. However, those who order relatively unpopular products usually buy more items. As a result, the most popular products are chosen by the least loyal customers, or, in other words, the least loyal audience makes you products popular.

I don’t suggest you stop worrying about loyalty, vice versa, focus on content marketing. If we think about loyalty as the last step in the Awareness-Familiarity-Consideration-Purchase chain, than the most aware customers are your most active buyers. So, the more you speak and write, and post, and share the better.

Secondly, 68% of people spend time reading about brands, which means your articles, blog posts, newsletters, infographics and other forms of content are theoretically effective. For the remaining 32% make your content valuable and interesting by adding useful information without direct advertising and purchase offers.

Thirdly, do not emphasize your niche products in the online content because this will disadvantage their uniqueness and distract loyal and the most familiar customers. Finally, evaluate your results to be sure those two principles actually work.

PS. as for me I would not trust sociologists that much - they also say birthdays are very useful. Like the more birthdays your have - the longer your live. That`s a very engaging statistics. ;-)   

Enjoy your day guys! I will write to you tomorrow.

4 Tips to Get the Best out of Social Media for your Business

Morning guys!

Today I am an early bird producing more interesting and hopefully useful tips. Here you are. :)

With all the amazing online shops the digital world has to offer, how do you attract the customers to really come to your retail store? Is online world for your Forever 21 a chance or a Catch 22?

In a nutshell, it is all about motivating and rewarding with the decent amount of support. Here are some simple tips on how to turn your ‘followers’ into the frequent customers:

  1. Use your social media as a Loyalty Programme Platform

Loyalty programs have become quite a popular tool for the retail stores to attract and please the customers. Similarly, to how the discounts and special deals are received as the award for spending the money, complement your customers for spending their time.

Make the process simple and engaging. Set the price list or assign a value for every Like, Tweet and comment and make it be easily converted into the real money or discount point that can be spend in the store. But does the exchange of Likes into the money really result in brand loyalty? Let`s just say: depends on how you approach it. If your circuit is reduced to a simple ‘bribing’, it will probably result just in a one-day (night) stand on your social media page. The real relationships begin when you show the audience you are on the same wavelength. This is how you do it:

• Do not forget about non-monetary rewards, because their symbolic power really helps building relationships and gaining loyalty from your audience.  Chose ‘the fan of the month’, vote for the funniest tweet or pick ‘the most dedicated customer’. These meaningful achievements may be seen as the online equivalent for the VIP treatments.

• Take it to the next level – give those ‘friends of the brand’ a chance to participate in what you are doing: invite them on a tour around your office, give a chance to dress the window of your store or share your wi-fi password.

• Be creative. (This might not be the best advice to give from the practicality point of view, therefore, you can look up for the examples here:

2. Everybody likes to play, just set the rules

Hopefully surprising, this is not about the Apps and Facebook games. Another way to invite people from and through Social Media to your store is quest – little adventure that integrates online and offline tasks into one big game, making it fun and useful.

• Think about the mechanics of the quest. How many tasks will there be in in adventure? Will you reveal all of them at once or keep the intrigue by posting one task a day (week/hour)?  Will you use only one social platform or integrate Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare all together?  

• Motivation is a king (queen). What is the purpose of the quest and why would people want to participate? It is not only about the prize in the end, so you should make the people feel what they do matters. Perhaps, connect the fun to something bigger (for each person who completes the quest, the company will donate certain amount of money to charity or plant one tree in the local park).  

• Examples of tasks: check-in, take a picture, find, post (anything that will benefit the brand and engage the audience).

3. Use social media as an emergency line

With any business customers will always have queries, questions and seek for assistance, so create a customer service desk on your social media page.

• CRM. Good CRM requires a lot of resources and contribution; however, even if you cannot afford helping your clients online 24/7, they should still feel your support.

• Do your best. Sometimes simply having a FAQs section or image on your Facebook will help. For more serious issue, establish the rules of when and how you will deal with them if you the instant response is impossible.

• Share the duties. Educate your audience with basic tips and advices on what to do if…, so they become experts and help you with the customer service. More on CRM and customer service online here.

That is it for today. :) Let me know if there is anything you want me to write about and thanks again for reading me!!!!!

Dissertation in Facts&Figures

Hi everyone!


Remember I`ve told you about great free websites for infographics? Today I decided to test Piktochart and create an illustration to my dissertation writing process. Looks pretty engaging to me. Tell me what you think!

Best wishes,

Me :)

Marketing advice from my Master's dissertation No.2

Rainy-windy-busy afternoon to everyone.:)

That's been a really loooong and pleasand weekend for me, hope you enjoyed it as well. 
It is Monday now and time to read and share more interesting ideas and useful tips. As I've told you last time my dissertation seems to be full of PR and marketing insights, so I cannot wait to share the second finding with you. In fact, this will be my own thoughts with reflection on something very engaging.  

Just the day before I finished my last chapter somewhere in the labyrinth of the Internet I`ve found these amazing video. Created by extremely talented motion and graphic designer Shimi Cohen and based on Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together, it made me think of this second tip. 

2. Don't make people feel lonely

The main conclusion in the video is that SNSs, although designed to connect people and facilitate communication, in fact, made us feel even more lonely. That is because of this three paradoxical assumptions that we all have as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ users (any other SNSs counts):

- We can put our attention wherever we want it to be
- We will always be heard
- We will never have to be alone

This is the actual video in case you have not watched it yet.

What has all of these to do with marketing? Hm...I suggest it might be true that people became  less connected, less happy or even  less sociable. On the other hand, it also is true that we make those 3 above mentioned suggestions and want social networking sites to make us less lonely. Therefor, why don't you,  marketers, give people what they want?

1. Be a friend - be that company which will always make its customers day - with its oustanding services, high quality products, helpful website and attractive social media content. 

2. Always listen to your customers and make them feel you appreciate them. 

3. Never ever leave your clients, customers, readers, visitors etc. without support. There is nothing more annoying than a customer service that cannot be reached when you need it most; nothing more dissapointing than my 'witty comments' on Facebook left unnoticed by the page owner; and nothing better than a cute picture of a fluffy cat and a 'good read' posted somewhere on Google+ at 2 pm just on time, in case I could not sleep. All of this makes the digital world better, transforming users illusions in some very real customer care. 

This is it for today. :)

P.S. How cool would that be if the word loneliness meant 'no friends online', while in real life somebody was always there for you? Like abso-bloody-lutely cool! :)

Marketing advice from my Master's dissertation No.1

Hey-hey, my amazing virtual audience! :) Hope you are all doing great enjoying you digital selves.

Have not posted anything here for quite some time...I know...in my defense - I was not procrastinating, but making some wonderful scientific discoveries! In other words, I spent few sleepless nights putting together the very last chapter of my dissertation. And you know what? - That was totally worth it! Not only now I am feeling proud and relieved, but I`ve also got some pretty wonderful tipsto share with you.

Just to give you some background information: my reserach was a part of MSc Sociology programme (in case you don't know. Hm...I wonder if my blog is adding anything to promotion of such a great major?). However, the topic I`ve chosen for investigation is very digital-PR-marketing-SNS orientated.

It is all about this neologism coined to describe a phenomenon when people 'Like' and '+1' and 'Share' and show huge online support, but than this all stay Facebook-(or whatever)-declared only. They (and by them I mean journalists and academia people) call it 'slacktvism', 'clicktivism', 'keyboard activism' and so on. If you google the thing, you'll probably find more articles on politics, civic activism, charities and similar contextualisation of the idea. Well, I kind of studied similar dimension in my dissertation, but because I cannot reveal anything specific here (due to University Policy on Ethics and something else), I decided to share some thoughts on the application of my findings for the PR and marketing purposes. In particular, it really is interesting why many people state 'purchase promising' behaviours online (e.g. in a form of 'Like'), but never actually buy, leaving your digital or social media manager sad and almost fired.

To clarify, with the tips provided bellow I hope to give you some answers (or just food for thought) on the issue of:

'I have 135k Twitter followers and have not sold anything to them yet', or 'Facebook picture of our new product got 200k likes and 100 reshares, but only 10 people order it from our shop' and etc.

I know these are very childish-silly kinds of examples, but I hope, you know what I mean. Let's see how slacktivism of SNS users may be transformed into some real sales. I will hope it will be possible to conclude after I explain some possible reasons of the existing gap between 'online intentions' and 'offline actions'.

1. Time is money.

This conclusion may seem quite obvious, but the biggest concern of nowaday lives is time, there is always not enough hours to sleep, not enough minutes to talk and not enough years to make our dreams come true. Many web designers and development companies have already understood this idea and applied to their interfaces, making everything as simply as it can possibly be. Therefore, every business trying to sell products needs to simplify purchasing experience. Online shops was a partial solution to a problem.

On the other hand, if you compare a number of received 'Likes' with your sales statistics, the difference may be explained by the 'instantaneous factor'. The nature of 'Like' or '+1' button suggests its being the easiest way of showing agreement/support/approval/emapthy and many other feelings and emotions (yeah, at this point you might ask where is the 'Unlike' or 'Hate' option).  Whilst the process of considering what was 'Liked' takes a while, with a high tendency towards 'not to buy' desicion. My conclusion here is that social media are great for PR and marketing purposes, but it is important to keep in mind their rather entertaining character. Thus, you can and should promote your stuff online, but not put many expectations on the instant sales growth.

In this respect, I think if there was a social network for shopaholics with the initial aim of 'selling and buying' with not just 'Like' but 'Buy' buttons, it would be really successful. People would create their 'shopper profiles' and post 'look what I`ve just bought' statuses. To some extent my point can be proved with the example of Russian social network vk.com where there are thousands of 'VK groups' (communities) where people only promore and sell '100% non fake Ray-Bin glasses from Vietnam'.

Conclusion: the longer it takes for a customer to proceed from initial seeing ('Liking') of your product to actual 'here is my money I want this' phase; the less likely is the chance of completing a purchase.

What to do:

• have online shop - have direct links on you SNS accounts (posts) to the online store; 
• if you don't have online store - have your adress and opening hours and all the important information regarding the purchase written AS CLEARLY AS POSSIBLE IN A PLACE WHERE YOUR CUSTOMER SEES IT (not where YOU think it should be)

P.S. Yeah, right, I am talking about how time is expensive these days and made you spent almost 15 valuable minutes reading this extra-long article....Sorry for that. :) 

Come back tomorrow and you will have even more shocking impressive fascinating tip based on the findings of my recent research! 

Take care! :)

The Art of Blogging

I am back on track and ready to share my new post with you guys.

A friend of mine (thanks for reading me, Simona) asked a couple of days ago if I can write something on how to actually start a blog. I thought this would be a great tip to share, because my blog is only a couple of weeks old, so I can reflect on my recent experience.

The following tips are useful for those who are just about to start a blog and for those who already did and want to improve their blog and make it more professional. Thus, first 2 tips are for beginners and the last 2 - for advanced users.

1. How to start a blog

We are lucky to live in the digital age, because the opportunities it gives us are trully unlimited. It is not like decades ago you had to invest a lot of time and money to start a newspaper and even more to have your own TV channel. On the contrary, social media today represent indibidual platforms for every person to become a news outlet. You want your TV channel - set up YouTube account; you want your own music label (radio station)- create MySpace page; you`ve always dramed on becoming a journalist - start a blog. You want it all together - have your personal website. Here I should probably mention, that I don`t in anyway mean compare or contrast the quality, content or the level of authority of the new and traditional media. Moreover, I don`t call my self a journalist writing this blog. But I do think that evry person can become a medium or at least a thought leader through blogs, websites and SNS.

Does not matter what you need a blog for, there are at least 2 free ways to start one.

Google Blogger (this is the think I am using now)

WordPress  (another free platfrom)

If you ask me which one is better, I don`t really know. I use Blogger and highly recomend it - easy-to-use, works great. Here is a blog post where the person says WordPress is more technologically difficult.

2. How to connect your blog to other social media accounts

As far as SEO is involved, you have better chances for your blog to get indexed if it is connected to the social media accounts. I am going to do it with my blog as well, but am not sure if I should conect it my personal accounts. Anyway, this would be something really useful to learn for the digital age purposes. Thus, if you decide to connect the blog with your personal profiles, make sure you`ve mentione the website`s adress by giving the relevant link!

In order to perform this digital bonding, first of all, you need a basic understanding of HTML. Don`t worry, nothing superficial. You just find social media icons that you want to appear on your page. Later on, you upload them to a photo bank such as Photobucket. This particular website is great, because it lets you copy HTML code for each photo you upload there.

The HTML code for the Twitter icon will look as following:

<a href="http://s1293.photobucket.com/user/Maria_Zhdanova/media/Social-Truck_twi_zpsa5b0aadc.png.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1293.photobucket.com/albums/b586/Maria_Zhdanova/Social-Truck_twi_zpsa5b0aadc.png" border="0" alt=" photo Social-Truck_twi_zpsa5b0aadc.png"/></a>

The third step is to copy the link, paste it into some document and than change the first <> weblink into the link to one of your social media accounts.

<https://twitter.com/MariaZhdanova3><img src="http://i1293.photobucket.com/albums/b586/Maria_Zhdanova/Social-Truck_twi_zpsa5b0aadc.png" border="0" alt=" photo Social-Truck_twi_zpsa5b0aadc.png"/></a>

This is how I have connected that Twitter icon to my Twitter account.

The finish up, you have to place this icon on your Blogger page. In order to do this, you have to go to your Blogger settings page. On the left hand side you will find: Overview, Posts, Pages and etc.

What you need is Layout. Click on the Layout and than find Add a Gadget option, this shows you a place where the social media icon will be situated on your blog page.

Click Add a Gadget, and find the one which says 'HTML/Java Script 

Finally, paste the HTML code we`ve created above into the gadget text box. You can also name this Gadget, for example, with 'Follow me on Twitter' headline.

3. How to increase your traffic to your blog

Well, I say - have thousands of friends and big friendly family. This will be your primary audience, anyway. Those people will spread the word and, hopefully, read (or at least) view your blog regularly, improving your stats. 

Secondly, don't forget to share every blog post in every possible SNS. I use Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for this purpose. Interestingly, I have different audiences in all of those networks, therefore, I can reach more people. Even though my Twitter is not as successful as Facebook, but few days ago, my Twitter follower re-twitted info about my blog post, while Facebook people were a bit more passive in this sense. If you ask why does it matter? I will tell you - the more your blog address (web link of http://bla-bla-bla) is mentioned on the Internet, the more it is visible for Google and other search engines.

After you create a blog, you will be concerned about being seen by Google, believe me. If Google don't see your blog - it almost does not exist on the Internet, and this is sad. With my blog, for instance, because it is very young, if you type its name to the Google Search (Tips from the UK, or What I know I share, or anything like that), you won't find it. To check, how many time Google knows about you, copy-paste your URL adress into the Google Search (you will be able to see how many of your friends and relatives do believe in your writing talent ;-)

4. Improve your blog and blogging skills

Read and learn. Here is good short reading list for you:

1. Jim Connolly talking about successful website building, absolutely 'blog applicable' material 

2. Jeff Bullas on ways to boost your blog traffic

3. Article on how to become a thought leader in your industry, not all about blogging, but still usefull. 

That is it for today! Don't forget to share.

Be happy, my dear readers! 

Guerrilla marketing and digital approach

Lazy Saturday to everyone,

I am a bit out of track these days - caught cold and was working on the last chapter of my dissertation, therefore, did not write much here. But today I was reading this little note I found on some SNS and thought it was interesting thing to write about.

Our discussion, more like my writing, today will concern the so-called 'guerrilla marketing' and its digital dimension. For those who don't know the term refers to quite cheap means of marketing for the businesses  who cannot afford very expensive tools, so this is something you can do even if your company has only 2 employees, 1 laptop and plenty of great ideas. The only condition for choosing guerrilla marketing as a main tactic is creativity. In that article I mentioned above 25 examples of the   guerrilla techniques for marketing and PR were given. I want to share with you the most interesting ones and give the idea of possible digital application of those techniques.

Picture source: crystalbballforecasting.com

Here we go:

1. Attract attention. One way of marketing as a real guerrilla is to organize a 'fake' meeting near you companies office. Say there will be a group of people holding streamers like 'This business is too amazing', 'this company is too professional', 'their services are too good and effective'. This kind of mass event will certainly gather people's attention and may become a good news hook. On the other hand, this somehow indirect way of promotion and even self irony will work better as more straightforward 'we are the best company - choose us'.

As for the digital implication of such technique one would probably immediately think of viral marketing. Viral content without direct sales flavour have proven its efficiency in a number of campaigns. One of my favourites is viral video about English speaking traffic officer, created by a language school in Ukraine before the UEFA EURO 2012  championship. For those who don't know - check this video. Another example would be Internet memes or the use of hashtags for marketing purposes that help generate awareness of a company or a product.

2. Use business cards. Every business person has business card. That's clear. What isn't so obvious are the creative ways those cards may be used. For instance, guerrilla marketing suggests going to a local library, finding books in the section, relevant for your business and putting hour business cards in those books. In this way, you are only doing good stuff. Say, a person is interested in reading about painting walls. He/ she opens a book and...ha! out of nowhere there is 'Clever wall painters' business card inside of the book. Of course, there is no guarantee the person will use your service, but readers would definitely appreciate a free bookmark you gave them.

The digital analogue of this approach can be made in a few ways. Firstly, you may think of posting stuff about your company in a relevant Internet communities and forums. However, I am not sure as a user  whether I would much appreciate this, because those posts don't always have similar value for me as a free bookmark. On the other hand,  information about a company on a source like Wikipedia as an example (in a good context) make people aware and increase chances of consideration. If you think of Wikipedia as a book, an article about your company or a mentioning is like a business card in the library. Hey, Wikipedia haters, don't get me started! I know some of you may think of its low authority as information source and unchecked content. As Master's student I am absolutely aware of the criticism and limits, but millions of users and crowds of other students would argue that Wikipedia has great persuasive power, just don't forget about the audience you are going to target.
Other form of digital business card, I guess, would be: a link to your website and social media accounts, reference in the thought leader's blog or industry journal.

3. Comment, read and keep commenting.  The last technique would be initially digital, but I would think of real-life alternative in the end. So, don't underestimate the importance on commenting and supporting conversations about your company (product, service). When you comment on information  regarding your business (e.g. in other people's blog or website), this gives you better promotional opportunities than writing information yourself - it is less direct and, therefore, less aggressive. Similarly, it is important to always comment and reply on other people's posts and notes in your own blog, website or SNS page.

As I promised to think of a real-life example of the last technique, the one thing I came up with is 'join the conversation'. Have people talking about your business out loud at some event, join their conversation and make other people hear. No, not like scream through loudspeaker, but spread the word in non-obtrusive maner. Like: 'Yeah, I heard that company is great, my sister uses their services all the time'.

SeoQuake for quick SEO and brand clean up

Hello everyone!

Hope, you are doing great and cannot wait to read my new tip. I did not come back to you for a couple of days, therefore, I decided this time I write something extremely interesting.

This tip will be more marketing, digital, PR focused, as I will talk (write) about SEO.

Few weeks ago I was working on the 'bran clean up', for those who don`t know it is a procedure the company needs to follow after they have changed the name, logo or moved to another location. This always seems quite unprofessional and damage the brand, when it`s already been few years after you changed your logo but media still uses the old one. If you want to change this unfortunate situation you really have to think about 'brand clean up' - create a list of links where your company is mentioned and contact the outlets asking to update the information. Seems like a lot of work, ha? It certainly is, but I will give you some tips how substantially decrease the amount of time you spend on this.

1. You need to search for all the pages that include any info about your company (you can search using the old company's name or a new one if the update you want regards a logo). It probably makes sense to limit the period of search, location and etc. Another way to go, is not update evrything, bit the most influential sources. How do you decide on those?

2. SeoQuake - this is a must have program (plugin) for every marketing/PR/difital professional. In a nutshell, this is great addition to your Google, Firefox or other search engine which helps visualize important data on SEO. On the SeoQuake website you can read the following:

'Beginner web masters and seos will find SeoQuake useful for estimating effectiveness and competitive ability of their SEO efforts. In the hands of professional SeoQuake will become a powerful and indispensable tool for analyzing optimization and promotion level of internet web-projects.'

After you install the software on your computer, you will be able to see SEO metrics for every page you open, such as Google page rank, the number of pages that are indexed by Yahoo, Alexa ranking and many others. Overall, it looks like this:

If you would like to read more about how to install this plugin and how to interpret metrics, visit this page. 

3. Back to the brand clean up. :-) so knowing the metrics for the websites, you can choose which ones definitely need updating (the most influential ones) and those who can wait. Moreover, you can optimize the Google search by setting desirable parameters, say, you are looking for the pages with most Facenook likes or something.

4. Another fantastic option SeoQuake gives you, is a possibility to export your search results into the Excel table. Isn't it great? Having everything in one place with opportunity to work with a file without additional copy-pasting. In addition, it is handy because for your clean up, you will probably need to mark all the search results with different colours or notes. For example, you can first mark the pages which are news stories or reports, or case studies. `these are the ones you, probably, won't be able to change. However, you can anyway email the editors with the updates on your new logo, company name and any other data for their future purposes. Secondly, you can mark pages that need update by your HR department, such as job offering websites, LinkedIn page, Yellow pages and etc. Thirdly, I suggest you mark search results which are difficult to interpret (any weird pages). This how I would do it, but the procedure may differ.

Here is a nice article explaining how you can export your SeoQuake results to Excel.

5. Finally, you will need to contact all the websites with the same email requesting the update. This is the stage that takes ages. You see, only when human factor is involved, the process slows down. :) Either than that, with SeoQuake brand clean up is as easy as it's never been.

Hope you like this info. Share and like and read me more .:)
            

Remember to send your work to cloud: useful tips on keeping your files safe

Nighty night to everyone!

Today or tonight's post will be about the cloud or in modern meaning the Internet storage softwares.

I came across the cloud storage in the beginning of my internship. I realized that the company saved all of the work online without having hundreds of files on their desktops. Unfortunately, I did not payed enough attention to this and later on this almost cost me a dissertation. Thus, after I spilled water over my laptop and could not access any data on it, I started thinking about alternative ways of keeping my work safe. Of course, you can back up your stuff and use USB storage, but it might be worth thinking of some up-to-date options.

Just to give you one reason the following info is useful, think of the situation when you are in the university, at the important meeting or with the business client and suddenly realize you forgot to bring some important documents. If you use cloud services this will never happen, because you can access your stuff from any other computer.

So, let me share with you what I know:

1. Googe Drive

This file storage and synchronization service was introduced by Google just in 2012. But I certainly think it has already found its fans and the number is 'a hell of a lot' (couldn't wait to use this expression). So if you have Gmail account, you can immediately start benefiting from the virtual storage space this virtual Drive offers you. Not only now I save my documents there, I very often work thefe creating presentations, charts and folders. Therefore, Google Drive is wonderful facilitation to companies' Intranet, because in Google Drive not only the documents can be stored, but the whole company can together work on every file. You can share your work with colleagues, edit their work and assign tasks and there is no need for 'email-attach-download-save as' routine. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

2. DropBox



Another online storage service very easy to use and very important to have. Similarly to Google Drive, it lets you save your work and share it with colleagues and friends. As far as I know, you can create the documents in DropBox and upload the existing ones from your computer. The great advantage of this service is the possibility of storing large size and amounts of data, such as photos. This is extremely handy when you want you pictures safe in one place and accessible for family members. In regards to the professional sphere, this is a necessity for designers, illustrators and guys who work with .jpg, .png and etc. To sum up, DropBox is something like 'free hard drive'.

Anyway, I would suggest using both services, because they complement each other, really.

Hope this helps.
:-)

         

3 sources of my daily inspiration

Hello! Привіт! Hallo to my lovely readers who, by the way, has viewed this blog for almost 300 times already! We are doing great together, thank you! :-*

Today's note will be short and aimed at those who are struggling with any kinds of tasks and desperately needs 'a push'.

Here are my three favourite sources of daily inspiration:

1. Thecoolhunter - one of the biggest online collections of amazing photographs of everything. It shows you everything 'cool' - restaurants, designs, places and outfits. I can spend hours browsing this one.

2. Brit+co this web magazine is just wonderful, in addition to creamy-cute pictures it offers great articles. I always enjoy reading pieces on organizing your life and space, choosing summery look or preparing lemon risotto. Here is one of those articles.

3. 99u if you are inspired enough and ideas are just flowing out of your head - check this one. This read provides you with wonderful advices making the dreams happen. If you need help with finding the right job, spending less time worrying but doing or want to know finally learn time management - this website is a must. Here is a great article on procrastination (especially recommended for the dissertation writers like my self)

Good luck and enjoy the rest of the weekend.:)

How to spend less time on SNS and never miss anything important

Hi guys!!;)

I know it is already Sunday in the UK, but I did not want to live you without any tips, so here we go. Don't forget to come back for more tomorrow.:) 

Do you use any social networking sites? Well, I am sure you do. I am registered in almost every possible SNS, therefore, find it quite challenging to keep all of the accounts up-to-date and follow all the news. Luckily, Web 2.0 has created solution for this problem, even two. 

If you are a smartphone owner and want to have all www news in one place, there are 2 great applications you need to download: 

1. Prismatic - this app (as both for Apple and web) is something close to a digital newspaper, or a platform integrating content from social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, and every news outlet you read. You can then filter the news according to your topics of interest, location or other parameters. Simple design and nice interface.

2. Flipboard - your social media news magazine for iOS and Android. As for me this one is much more fun comparing to Prismatic. Overall, it depends on what you prefer - a magazine (with all the colourful  glance) or a newspaper (strict classy b&w). Flipboard allows you to browse all content from your social media accounts and from all over the web based on your interests. By choosing to read about food, marketing or fashion (or about everything at once) you can create unique, absolutely personalized magazine! It is extremely simple, bright and handy when you don't want to spend hours checking all the SNS you are registered with.

Have fun exploring!

Good night or good morning.:) 

Cision: Media Relations from the new vision

Sunny hello to everyone!

Today`s information may look like some kind of advertising, but it is not, even though I do recommend this software to every PR professional.

The very first day of my internship I was introduced to the best friend of every PR person - Cisionpoint by Cision.

I don`t know if you ever had 'Excel based map' experience (when you have to create and update, and rearrange the lists of media contacts important for your work), but I know this was terrible and inconvinient.
Not only we had to almost be friends with journalists to get their contacts or spend the whole week Googleing and searching for the email address so secret it was never displayed on the newspapers website, but the data needed quite a regular update with the same procedures.

Apparently in the UK (and the US) things are so much easier, you just subscribe for the Cisionpoint software and half of the work is already done for you.

Details

What is it? - Imagine your Excel list of media contacts in the global scale. Yes, this software has all (or almost all) media contacts, including the personal contacts of journalists, freelancers, bloggers and even Twitter though leaders necessary for successful campaign. Of course, the most fully completed database, I believe, is for UK and American media outlets. However, I checked, all the most influential Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Turkish contacts are there.

What can I do with it? - You can create projects and make media contact`s lists for every of them, handpicking the right journalists. The search options even let you find people who write about 'fish tourism from radical perspective' (but why would you want to look for them?). More seriously, the profiles of the newspapers, magazines and webistes include information about the audience, editors, areas of interests, influentiality and etc.
In addition, you can write and send press releases through this software to the early chosen contacts, making the emails as personalised as possible just in a few clicks! (I was really impressed with this). Later on, you will receive the monitoring of your coverage on a daily basis and analyse the results of your work. You can also add your own contacts and edit existing ones.



Why would I need it? - I really have no ideas about the monthly price the company should pay for using this software, but I believe it is worth it. (Information on the prices should be available here). Cisionpoint substantially help PR professionals in their daily routine, is quite simple and easy-to-use.

Here are some YouTube videos I found to show Cisionpoint in work:

1. Search tutorial 

2. Coverage monitoring notifications tutorial 

And finally, on cision blog I found this article interesting, so I share it with you - 

7 PR Pitches That Will Get My Attention Every Time

Hope this is useful. :)

Best wishes! 

Great information sources for Digital Marketing geeks

Hi everyone! (Sometimes it feels like I am talking to myself)

Today I am writing this post little bit later, because it is raining outside, I have day off from work and need to meet my dissertation supervisor. Even though the day is busy, I still decided to spend a few minutes sharing valuable (let's hope so) information with you.

I think for people who already work in marketing, PR and media the following paragraphs won't be surprising at all, but for beginners and recent graduates it might be interesting.

Here is a list of sources (blogs and websites) I have started reading regularly to receive all the up-to-date information from the digital world. Most of them started as blogs similar to mine, but now they are thought leaders and first class news providers. There you go:

TOP-8 NEWS SOURCES EVERY DIGITAL MARKETING MEDIA PR PROFESSIONAL SHOULD READ

1. Mashable  (Top Social Media News, technology innovations and digital stuff) - my favourite one

2. Econsultancy (Digital Marketing) - my second favourite source

3. Brand Republic (Advertising, Media, Marketing and PR)

4. Social Media Today (Social media insights for business, I personally love their infographics) 

5. The Next Web  (Blog on technology which is very useful for digital marketing and everything on the Web)

6. Marketing (Magazine, obviously for Marketing specialists and fans) 

7. SEO Moz or just MOZ (The company specializing in SEO since 2004, their blog is extremely useful for search engine optimization professionals) 

8. Allthings D (technology and media news for digital marketing purposes) 

Enjoy! And I wish, one day, somebody will mention my blog in their TOP list.

Cheerio! :)