Simple content marketing tips

Monday morning to everyone! :) Hope, you all had a great weekend!

This week I will start from explaining the basics of the content marketing, because this truly is a big thing nowadays. In case you are wondering why content marketing is important, I will provide you with 3 interesting facts from 2 different studies (by Content Marketing Institute and NewsReach)

1. 78% of UK companies invest in content marketing 

2. 54% of businesses plan to invest more into content marketing next year

3. 97% of UK organisations planed to maintain or increase their investments in content marketing this year

When marketing your content there are three simple but importnat things to remember:

1. Use various formats of content. Overall, among 12 different content marketing tactics - social media channels, blogs and case studies are seen by the practitioners as the most effective. Video as a way of delivering messages is used by 70% of UK businesses, making it 6th most effectively used content marketing tool. Interestingly, infographics - very engaging, likeable and shareable type of content, are used by 32% of companies. I believe this number will increase withing the next few years, because users seems to appreciate infographics more than long boring articles. Finally, contests, games and quests are brilliant, just make sure you know the best way to approach them. This recent piece at +Jeff Bullas blog on Facebook contests should be helpful. 

2. Use multiple platforms to deliver your content. It is not only about driviing traffic, but simplifying it for your audience. It is always great when the mechanics of the website or company`s blog allow readers/visitors to share the content in one click. Thus, don't forget to put the necessary social media buttons and make sure it is possible to login to your site through those social media channels. (And to make this paragraph sound more legitimate, here is some more statistics for you). 83% of all businesses use LinkedIn to share their content, this is a significant figure proving that professional networks cannot be underestimated. Moreover, Google Plus seems to promise great future for your business presence online.

3. It is not about how your write, but what your write about. Quality over quantity, content and essence over the delivery format - there are many ways to formulate this tip. The main point is that everyone, including Google and other digital habitants are becoming smarter developing digital savvy, creating a real challenge for the content marketing practitioners. Not only your content should be tailored for the specific audience, it should always provide additional value and originality. Facts and figures should be up-to-date, 'borrowed' ideas should be referenced, you should be an expert in what you write. (Well, luckily I just share what I know here, not pretending to be a business shark or marketing guru). 

Finally, I have co-written this fabulous blog post with my colleague +Euan Leopold (who, by the way, has also started his own blog). Don`t forget to check it out! 

Have a great productive week and come back tomorrow as I will share some thoughts with you on the new iPhone! :) 

Social bookmarking and why you need it

Hi folks! How`re you doing? ;)

I feel so terrible for leaving you here, all alone, in this lonely Internet, without any new posts for a couple of days. That`s not that I have been procrastinating, in fact, I was doing the opposite - working as a tutor on the Freshers Week in the University of Glasgow. This was so much fun! :-) So great to be in the shoes of the 'university person' again. Oh, I just realised how much I miss my recently ended student days!!!

Anyway, you are probably hungry for some food for thought, don`t you? And I am going to give you some regarding the social bookmarking: what it is, why you need to know about it and how to do it. Enjoy!

1. Social bookmarking is...Well, in a non-digital word bookmarking is a process of putting something (card, piece of paper or a fancy silver bookmark) into the book to note your favourite pages or those that are importnat to you. In the digital word, information in the virtual space can be similarly organised through social bookmarking services. These are the online services where content is 'tagged' and shared in a way so the other people can find their way to what actual interests them. Hm...how can I make sound even simplier...well, most of us use Internet as a source of news: some of you are not necesserly keen to know what is happening in the financial sector, but rather stay updated with the recent technology innovations. Therefore, on social bookmarking website you can go and search directly for the information based on your preferences and using the 'keywords' (say: iPhone 5s, Apple, smartphones).

2. I need to know about social bookmarking services (SBS) because...There are three main reasons, I wouldsay, depending on who you are. (This sounds like a very phylosophical matter - knowing who we are and what we want in this life;-).

As an Internet user in general, you would use SBS because it is an easy and fast way to search for the information, especially if you want to track everything that is online regarding a particular issue. This may be also useful for you professional and studying purposes when you are researching a topic.

The important thing to mention here is that SBS do not actually contain materials (news, resources) per se, but links to those materials, so it kind of looks as a library catalogue or a huge list of references.
So, if you are a student, you would need to know abour SBS to save some time finding sources for your essays and projects.

Finally, if you are PR-person, you should think of SBS as a great tool for driving traffic to your press- and publised campaign materials by tagging them with the relevant key words. For instance, if you are performing a new product launch campaign and have the press release about this e.g. new fabulous fishing kit by FishWithUs you can save the link to this press release on the SBS. Adding the keywords such as 'fishing', 'fishing kit', 'outdoor activities' etc. you will make users who search for this keywords see your press release! Is not it great? Especially, if you think of it from the SEO point of view.

3. I like the idea, tell me how to start! So if you are fancy trying to 'socially bookmark' something, just register with one of the SBS I provide below and see which one you like the most. Finally, I guess for the PR-people it might be a great idea to try using all of them at once (does help to generate traffic).

- Twitter (are you surprised?). By hashtagging people and stuff in general you also bookmark and sort the information, so for the PR - tweeting about your event or product is a great alternative (compliment) to the traditional press release.

- StumbleUpon

- Reddit

- Delicious

- Digg 

- Scoop.it 

- Chime.in

P.S. I know this is not a full list - just those I had in mind. If you know more SBS - let me know. :) Have a great night! I will see (em...talk/write to) you soon!

P.P.S I just realised, another way to use SBS is to promote your blog!! Or my blog :) Feel free to try tagging some of my posts, I will be very grateful :) By the way, many thanks to +Eduardo De Sales for always reading me and commenting on my posts! 

Why your business should be on Google+

Good afternoon, my dear friends, readers and followers! Hi, Mom and Dad, I know you always read me! :)

Today I will share with you some up-to-date piece of knowledge regarding the use of social media channels for business purposes. So, I am sure all of you guys use Facebook and/or Twitter (Vk.com in post Soviet Union countries) as main online communication and connection tool. Obviously, businesses use these SNS for the marketing purposes. For instance, H&M Facebook page with its 16 million Likes can really be named 'encyclopedia example of the social media channels use for retail sector'. On the other hand, Instagram has also proved to be valuable network for fashion brands' online presence. I was always fond of the fashion it-girls like Mira Duma (429k Instagram followers) and how they personalise their businesses (Buro27.ru). Or, as another example, what do you think about Jobs movie promotion campaign? 15 seconds Instagram clips as an alternative to a traditional YouTube trailer looks smart and innovative! (Can you say so about the new iPhone(s)?)

A couple of years ago social media marketing was considered the biggest trend in the industry. I believe it still is important with all the efforts big brands invest into maintaining their SNS pages and even making CRM platforms out of them. One trend I have noticed while in the UK is the emphasise put on Google+ as a No.1 social network for businesses. So, have you heard of Google+?

Google+ is a relatively new SNS launched by Google (obviously) in 2011 and outnumbering Twitter users in just 2 years period! I have been using it for 3 months only, but  can already share with you some hints on why it is important to have your business 'google plused':

1. Search engine optimization  is the biggest concern. On the contrary to websites like YouTube or Facebook, whose content is quite restriced from SEO assessing, Google Plus represents the social network automatically indexed by Google Search. Just like any ther web page, content on the Google+ appears on search, can and does influence your page rank. Moreover, the high ranked information shared on this SNS stays in top search results for years. To compare, your awesomely popular Tweet will be lost in the Net within minutes. Interesting study published by MOZ suggests +1 action on Google+ (smth similar to Facebook`s Like) is 'more highly correlated with search rankings than any other factor. In fact, the correlation of Google +1s beat out other well known metrics including linking root domains, Facebook shares, and even keyword usage'.

2. The new old Authorship. I find my self producing Facebook masterpiece-posts, sharing genious 140 words on Twitter (occasionally) and writing this, hopefully interesting, blog ; clearly, I want the whole world to know who the author is. It is not like we live in the 100%-piracy-copyright infreengement-free world, you know. :) Anyway, Google Plus have introduced this new feature called Google Authorship which works in the following way. First, you should register your email as an author. Secondly, when you share your publications from other web sites (e.g. http://whatiknowishare.blogspot.com) on Google+ do not forget to mention your authorship. As the result, when somebody will google an article written by you, your profile photo from Google Plus will apear next to the search result. 

Again, it is important for search optimization, for promoting your content (as in 'more by Fabulous Author') and building personal brand. 

3. Google Timing+ my third favourite feature offered by G+. How do you know when your readers/customers/clients/fans are online? When should you send our your press release, Tweet latest rumors or post picture of the recently launched products? One way to go, is to read this study by Buddy Media naming the end of the week and weekends better time for online engagement. Thus, B2B Twitter  is more efficient on weekdays, whilst on B2C works best for Facebook on the weekends. You can find even more impressive data there, but another way to discovere the right timing is to go on Google+. Timing+ allows for automatic calculation of when your content gets the highest attention through +1 and re-posts. Therefore, you will always be smart in time managing your content. By the way, did you know that the best time for David Beckham to be active on G+ is Thursday between 20:00 and 21:00? Now, you know! 

There are so many more great features Google Plus has to offer, have fun trying out! 

'Wrecking' Hannah Montana Part 2

Hi guys!

I knew this was coming! Remember what I`ve told you about Miley Cyrus a couple of posts ago? Just today the girl released her new video 'Wrecking Ball' where she is nacked, rides the big steel ball, licks the thing and smashes everything with a baseball stick. I say 'weird'! What do you think?

In terms of marketing part of the whole event, the video aims on beating new record on Vevo (previous one was for the song 'We Can`t Stop'). By the time of me writing this post, this video already had more than 14 million view. Good luck with that!

By the way, did you know, that the outrageous VMA performance made Hannah Montana the most widely mentioned person on Twitter with 4.5 million mentions during the performance only?

Enjoy the video, tell me what you think about this new image of Milley and come back tomorrow for a really serious post! 

Job hunting, CV writing and professional profile building

Good Monday morning to everyone! :)

Hope, you had a wonderful weekend! It is a beginning of new week, new life and time to look for a new job. For those who are just about to hand in a CV or two to the desired companies (mine is Google), I thought this post may provide some insights.

Earlier today I came accross this article on Mashable (seems like I only post links to this website) talking about Facebook introducing 'Professional Skills' category. It seems like social networking sites are becoming more and more appropriate for building employer-employee relationships. I believe most of you already have LinkedIn profile. I personally find it very useful for me (as a recent graduate), because of the possibility to connect with influencers, look for new opportunities and make quick applications. However, increased number of users demand certain improvements from the SNS. In addition, for your LinkedIn experience to be fruitfull there are 13 mistakes to avoid.

Anyway, LinkedIn is great, but let me share with you some interesting alternatives for creating professional image online. I would want this tips to be helpful for merketers, PR-people and advertising job hunters, but everyone else is also welcome to read and share:)

1. I always wanted to have a business card (not sure if I do enough business for that), smartly designed piece of recycled paper with my name on it, at least. The World Wide Web made my dreams come true - About.me is a wonderful and easy-to-use service ('nameplate') for making online business cards. Many thanks to my friend TJ for telling me about this one. And! you can easily transform the thing into a short CV and send the link with you paper resume.

2. Some jobs not only require to have a curriculum vitae to be considered as a potential candidate, but ask for the portfolio. If you are a designer, person who makes creative commercials or a web developer - check out Zerply and show your work to the rest of the world.

3. Another alternative to the LinkedIn page is a 'branded web presence' making tool called Flavors.me. This service also allows you to connect all the social media profiles at one web-address; create your resume and personal card; promote your 'personal brand' online.

4. For creative industry workers infographics CV does not look like a bad idea at all. If you don`t feel like making it yourself, don`t have inner designer-self or simply want to have it done quick - I have a solution for you. I heard this is a Russian start-up which proved to be successful allover the world. ResumUP - great took for visualising your Facebook or LinkedIn profile. The advantage is that infographics CV looks really clear and informative, so can be send to employers on its on, whilst the 'comics-looking-like' resumes may need a textual compliment. I have used this service myself and really enjoyed the results!

5. If you are an inspiring marketing or PR-professional, SEO guru or content marketing evangelist who does a lot of talks on the subject, takes active part in conferences, TED talks and other speakers featuring events, you should register with ExpertFile. This is probably not for recent graduates, but who knows what you will achieve in the next 5 years, right? ;-)

Good luck getting your dream job!

Press Release writing tips for Dummies and Gurus

Hi guys! How`ve you been? :)

I feel like the happiest person in the world today - I have moved to a new gorgeous flat, my mom has Birthday and I am becoming famous! :) For those who knows Russian, check this piece at Media Marketing Review.

Thanks again for reading me!

Ok, let`s do business now. Today I am going to share with you something that I have learnt about Press Releases. PR-gurus might find some of these tips pretty obvious or simple - just skip this part and go to the last paragraphs (this is where all the cool stuff will be). Enjoy!

1. Press release is like Masters dissertation - needs deadline and/or inspiration to be produces.
Moreover, I compare this two types of written materials, because they both have to be informative, logically structured, clear and useful (probably, 'critical analysis' and 'contribution to the field of knowledge' are two things which make dissertation more demanding). Thus, it does take time to decide what to write and how. The important point is that not every single piece of information is newsworthy should be sent to journalists. Traditionally, the list of newsworthy items include: events, products and services launches, awards, sales, celebrations, scandals etc. (hm...why would you want to be involved in scandal? Unless...you are Miley Syrus :).
However, even the worst story can be 'newsjacked' and you can always make a big story from nothing...well, almost nothing or make the big story huge! For instance, with this 'Yahoo changing logo' story, initially you would think of two stages for publicity 'we are going to change our logo'  and 'here is how we did it'. Yahoo managed to get 30 days long on-going buzz around the brand with proper Twitter campaign and involvement of every social media channel. People were looking forward, guessing, offering their variants of logo. It might be argued that the outcomes of the brand icon change are rather dissapointing, but the PR was great!

2. The 5 “W”s and an “H” is what makes press release work. These are the five question that must be answered in the first couple of sentences , so that it is clear what it all is about. Here is a check list for you:

• Who?  Is the story about
• What? This person/group of people/company etc. have done
• Where? Did he/she/it/they do it
• When? Did it happen
• Why? That is always a tricky question :) Why does everyone (target audience) needs to know this
• How? Details on the previous points.

3. Design for journalists and technology. Interestingly, the tricks of making journalists to actualy read and consider you story differ from country to country. Well, at least this is what I discovered in th UK. Back at home I was taught to always send releases as attachments in .doc format - it is convinient to edit the file, so your release (slightly changed) can be published as a news story within half an hour or so. On the contrary, in Glasgow I learnt that journalists are IT-geeks :) I mean, they always check emails on their smartphones or tablets. Thus, if press release is attached - chances to have it read decrease significantly. Every extra click (Save as - Rename - Open etc) costs extra time --> time is money --> look for your email in the Trash. To sum up, the safest way to go is to both insert press release into the body of the letter and attach it. However, you should never write stuff like 'Hi, I am from this PR agency, find our release attached'. Say no to impersonal, template emails without any specification of why you deserve attention!

4. It is all about the journalists. Yes, about 50% of the press release success depends on how you approach journalists. There is a lot of secrets to building sustainable relationships with press people and you can check them here. The most important idea to remember is that headline is a king - if it does not stand out from hundreds of other emails, your story will get lost. Secondly, every person loves attention. Show some knowledge of their previous articles, do not forget to complement and do not send press materials about 'new bar opening on the corner' to the person writing about health and medicine! 

I have found this two amazing Twitter accounts (@DearPR & @DearJournalist really helpful in this sense. These are the two pages  and Dear Journalist  (one for PR people and another one for journalists) full with great and witty tips on Do`s and Dont`s for those who wants to be be professional. 

Just to give you an idea, here is a tip for PR:

@DearPR: please don't send pitches that are pages long and aren't even on my beat.

@DearPR Morning media events should always have coffee available. Always.

@DearPR I'm not the boss of my colleagues, so stop asking if I can send someone down to attend the event in my place.

And these are for Journalists:

@DearJournalist

Funny how when more celebrities were added to the tip sheet you are suddenly available to attend the show.

@DearJournalist

Dear Journalist: What part of one giftbag per person can you not understand?

@DearJournalist

Dear Journalist: You misspelled the clients name. AGAIN!

I think this is hilarious and useful :)

5. One last tip. In this digital world there can be so many new ways of delivering the story without having a casual press release. The above mentioned Twitter is a great place for making news. Just Tweet what`s happening for your client and make it special. Like in that story with Susan Boyle and her new album. In a nutshell, her PR agent decided to make a special hashtag for the event, which did not look ok. See for your self - #susanalbumparty :)) Later on it was changed to #SusanBoylesAlbumParty, but I guess hashtag fail was a great PR trick on its own. 

Tell me what you think and may all your press releases be successful! :)

How I became a millionaire blogger with Cision

Morning folks!

For those who thought that I forgot about you and this blog - the answer is no! I am still here, it is just that something so unbelieveable happened to me these days, that I needed a couple of days to realise this was true and so now I am finally ready to share this with you. :)

Before I tell you what it was I have to start from the beginning. Long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...(should probably skip this part)...Maria (this is me in case you do not know) decided to start a blog. This blog. I have mentioned somewhere earlier why I did it and you can say I lack belief and confidence or whatever, but I have never expected it to become this successful, not at least within 3 weeks!
With blogs I thought it takes a while for Google to index you, for Internet crawlers to notice you and for readers to start loving what you write. And it certainly does, but with me it all happened so quickly that I am still pleasantly shocked. :) 

Here is what happened step-by-step.

1. Remember, my piece on Cision - huge media contacts' database and the best tool for every PR  person?  I wrote that post because I trully believed in the usefulness of this software and was absolutely amazed with what it offered. What happened within 3 days is that I started noticing unexpected amount of traffic coming to my blog. 'Woo-hoo! I blog like a pro' - that's the kind of though I had immediately. :) Not to say that I don't, but the fact is that Cision did make me a millioner, in digital sense. 

2. It turned out that the company has recently introduced new software, called Content Marketing, and I was lucky enough to experience all the benefits of it for free.

[Just so you know, content marketing really is a big deal these days! According to one of the latest Econsultancy report, this is a key priority and, probably, the most significant digital trend for the following year. Thus, content marketing is a new king.]

So, what Cision has to offer in this context? Apparently, it it something even bigger than having all the media contacts in one place and send personalised press releases with one click. Again, the above mentioned Econsultancy not only names content marketing to be something all the marketers should keep their eye on, but distinguishes 'newsjacking' as a seperate valuable content marketing tool. Newsjacking means 'injecting your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business' (Scott, 2011). What Cision Content Marketing software does, it uses the term in a very straightforward way. 

3. It literarly makes your news stories, press releases, blog posts appear in more than 60,000 key publishing websites (all over the world). Yes, we are talking The Times, CNN, Daily Mail and everything else you think is TOP. This is what happened to my blog post!!! Impressive, ha? Moreover, it really is different from simple advertising or paid content, because it does not look like a banner or cheap 'click on me' kind of thing. The stories look like part of the website content in a form of 'suggested news' or 'more related stories'. 

4. What have all of this given me? Could I imagine being on Daily Mail or Mashable? No way, not at this point of my blogging life. I can go on about how I am deeply greatful to Cision for noticing my blog and how impressed I am with their new service, but let`s be more professional here. People who know staff about digital, marketing and PR should be able to see if the new Cision software works from the report I attach below.

I told you I was a millionaire! :)

For those who do not know:

Impressions: How many people/businesses have chosen to engage and go onto the page.
Clicks: How many people have clicked onto the article

These are the sources that gave me traffic:

And finally, my weekly statistics (sociologists in me feels extremely happy about this):

As you can see, during the week with Cision Content Marketing I did not have less than 200.000 impressions daily. 

Some concluding thoughts:

1. Yes, I am lucky.

2. Yes, I did earn my first million with Cision.

3. Again, I do not want to talk about the price, because I am not selling anything here but sharing the fantastic experience I had. I believe you can check the details and request other useful information here. The only thing I want to add in the end is that I see so many ways this new software can help PR practitioners. First of all, it is seems like an interesting facilitation for different campaigns, because it does give more distribution and raise awareness. On the other hand, (I do not really wish this to happen to anyone, but) imagine you have a disastrous campaign, your press releases just did not make it, no one wants to publish the story. No, it is not because you are bad, say, the client is weird and wants to make news form a story that has been already revelead years ago. Well, I can think of different reasons for the campaign to not be successful, and I am sure you can too. The fact is you should show the client what you have done, no matter what. I think that is a great solution to use your own blog or website to feature the story and than distribute it through Content Marketing to all the top news services. This is the 100% traffic-attraction effective tool.  

Fuh, I feel so relieved, like I could not  keep this information without sharing anymore! ;) So glad I did it! 

I do hope you find this useful.

Sincerely yours,

M