LinkedIn versus SlideShare

Credit: Pudding4Brain and Canva

I have been experimenting publishing articles on LinkedIn.

Enjoy it! I will update you on how it has performed compared to SlideShare.

Social media management: worth it?

Preston, Creative Commons

I currently do social media management for two Twitter accounts plus tending to my own. There is nothing like getting stuck in to teach you what works or doesn't work - reading social media management guides will only help you so much.

I am trying various tactics and am quite pleased with results so far. Twitter is an immediate platform so you don't have to wait like the proverbial spider in the web for flies to stick to you. Did I say flies? I meant followers. So if you have a childish penchant for instant gratification, Twitter is your digital tool. Not that I am saying I am childish!

My experiments are about engagement in terms of content and time. I am trying out humour, expert tips (from a variety of marketers), curious photos (with a touch of vintage) and intriguing products/concepts. For my own account I try to tweet about hobbies and past-times at the weekend, keeping week days as business only (unless I get really tempted by something shiny!). I am using Buffer and finding that the basic, free account works quite well. Buffer shortens links and is very easy to use, I am saving time as scheduling means I can leave the app to manage tweet delivery while I do something else.

On my own account I started with around 300 followers and I am now up to 464 in a short amount of time. With my clients I am also having good results. But the most important thing is not the quantity but the quality. There is no point having lots of followers for a company if these are not customers or potential customers. So if the business is niche or geographically limited, it doesn't make sense to have a huge amount of followers, especially if the business couldn't cope with huge orders. I love challenges, but "Know your limits" is the most valuable business lesson I have ever learned.

What else have I been up to? Find out reading these two articles I published on LinkedIn:

Shoot 'Em Up copywriting – don't hire a cowboy

This is all about copywriting within a marketing strategy. There are a few insights on planning by a fellow marketer (see comments).

Why I love digital marketing

This is why I love my job and what my current challenges are. I am mentioning a free digital marketing course and the names of a few experts to follow.

STOP PRESS, STOP PRESS, HOT UPDATE! Making a geography gaffe creates huge engagement. This morning I wrongly said that Lille is in Belgium, which is not incorrect but the event I was tweeting about happened in France... #mustreadthedailymailproperly.

UPDATE: followers are now 596 at 9 November 2014 and it's quality followers too, I am getting a lot of CEOs for some reason....

Followers are at 1698 in May 2017.
More articles:

Taking the pain and hazard out of pricing

The secret of success

SEO is like the Phoenix

Phoenix-Fabelwesen

I have been busy writing other people's blogs, websites and so on, so I have neglected my own (website and blog), but I am planning to come back to it (the blog). I am to teach a digital marketing course and would like to share insights - I am sure I can learn something from a younger generation who, unlike me, grew up with digital technology.

Plenty has happened in the SEO world and again we had articles saying SEO is dead, but it is not. What has changed - no change there - is Google's algorithms, the "dreaded" updates come thick and fast.

What hasn't changed is that content is still king. So if you have developed a healthy content marketing strategy, you don't need to worry. For those who think that hiring a copywriter is a luxury or they believe they can do it themselves with a small aubergine: a well-worded website or blog post can generate sales.

So please trust a copywriter to know how to present your products, make them appealing to the target market and hire a marketing consultant to diffuse your message. I do both things but it has taken me a few years to hone these skills, despite a prior career in journalism. Writing for the web is a specialised skill, plus you need to keep abreast of what Google is up to and follow regulation. Here is the regulation for the UK; 

• http://www.iabuk.net/policy/digital-policy-guide
• http://ico.org.uk/for_organisations/sector_guides/marketing.

I will be back!

Forget that content crown! How many hats do you wear?

If 2012 marketing conferences were all about proclaiming that CONTENT is KING, 2013 has been spent (so far) discussing MOBILE MARKETING. 

I have participated to countless discussions on both topics and offered my 2p on that old chestnut, SEO IS DEAD, but what I have realised, both as a marketing consultant (remote) and as a contractor (inhouse) is that the content crown has been replaced by a multitude of hats. This has created a kind of professional identity crisis: what am I now? 

By Marcus Hodges

To be honest, I'm not bothered, but it bothers other people, especially those who are very fond of pigeonholing. At a networking event, recently, I had to explain what I do to people who don't know what SEO is (they still exist, despite all the LinkedIn discussions, the DIY tweets - mine are called #TweetsforSEO and my moniker is @simonecas - and countless features in trade publications). 

At this business networking event, I started saying I do content marketing and SEO, then tried copywriting and website optimization, then went for "I rank websites on Google, I do social media, I monitor online reputation..." 

At some point I got asked if I was in marketing or PR. And to confuse the issue even further, I still do some editing and journalism work. Now, correct me if I am wrong but these used to be different 'fields' only a few years back:

Journalist: objective communicator
Editor: objective and subjective operator
Copywriter (ad copy): subjective
PR: subjective communicator (aka mouthpiece of brand)
Marketeer: mostly subjective but with some room for objectivity, for instance if raising awareness about an issue
SEO/social media bod: subjective (you bark for the client).

A few years back if you moved from journalism to marketing/PR you crossed the other side, as if a Darth Vader of commerce was lurking across an imaginary line, trying to seduce you to lose your objectivity. 

Are professional boundaries being blurred? You tell me.

Is social media a candy shop open 24/7?

Brian Solis & JESS

An incident this morning gave me an idea for this blog post, alongside something a business coach once told me: "People should not hire somebody else to do social media for them". I just stared at this 'rude person' who knows me professionally, after all that's how I make my living and while I agree that a small business might not be able to afford to hire a consultant, I think this is the silliest piece of advice I have ever heard. 

The reality is that all main social media platforms are free and there are so many of them you can easily be a victim of a pick-and-mix greedy attack: I'll have a bit of this and of that and the other. And what you see on the wheel pictured above, which I used to illustrate a client's business blog last year, is not all - platforms are invented at a fast pace. It's the same for blogging, one blog doesn't feel enough for certain people (I do declare my humanity here - and fallibility - by saying I have five blogs, which keep me quite busy. My excuse is that writing comes easy to me).

Anyway, back to social media, if you decide to have a bit of everything you will end up not being able to handle anything well (unless you make social media a full-time job, that is). Social media is time consuming and while it's necessary to build a business reputation, it's also true that you don't need to spread yourself across the net and be everywhere to succeed. 

Fist of all, what is your business? B2B or B2C? Where do your potential customers hang out? I will be honest and say that I have encountered businesses that don't need social media to survive because they have strong sales teams. A bit of a shocker for an internet addict like me. However unless you are a strong salesperson who thinks cold calling is fun (it's effective still), you do need to use social media as it's a cost-effective way of marketing a business.

Sounds easy but it's not. It's all about branding, which is a fancy way of saying, if your website or social media accounts don't explain clearly and consistently what you do, you will struggle to get customers. That's where a business realises they might need help - if they haven't got a marketing person, they either hire an agency or a consultant. 

I know anybody can write a blog post, but can you write copy that increases your sales? Can you craft posts on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook (depending if you are selling to consumers or businesses) that invite people to visit your website? Can your website's copy retain visitors' attention (ie the bounce rate) and translate browsers into buyers? 

Now, do you think that anybody can run a social media strategy? Can you analyse what you are doing, pivot if it doesn't work and try something else? Can you find the right channels for your businesses? Are you wasting time on Pinterest that could be better used on Facebook or Twitter? Decisions, decisions... Can you update your blog on a regular basis? Can you do all that while meeting clients, implementing your services and sourcing/dispatching your products? Can you also keep an eye on your competitors? Can you integrate all you do so you can build a solid reputation online and offline?

I'd love to hear how you have juggled all this and what you have learnt. I'm open to share my own journey.

Measuring ROI - the real digital divide (business reality against practitioners' theory)

By Glen Bowman

Aside being a beta junky (please leave a message if you are launching anything, any time soon), I'm addicted to LinkedIn discussions. I cannot resist butting in when somebody makes unrealistic, pompous, half-baked or old-hat assumptions about digital marketing. 

Yes, I love reading US, up-to-the-minute industry newsletters but often there is a big divide between theory and practice or, more to the point, what you should be doing and the budget/time you have. Mind the budget gap!

For me it's a given that for small businesses you can do internet marketing using free tools. But what about ROI, that slippery, hard-to-measure bane of any digital pro's life? Well, if you have zero budget for fancy tools, you use Google analytics to monitor visitors and Google Trends/Adwords Tool for keywords (for the website, blog posts and campaigns). 

You might well ask, yes, but what do you do? I help a customer to rank organically, do some targeted social media, use a few new free tools (beta commitment always pays off) then I ask the client if sales have gone up. 

A high Google ranking is useless if it doesn't convert into sales. So that's how I measure ROI for small businesses: I find out how many visitors have visited the website and then ask the client for sales figures. Of course it might not work out, but it's rare that you don't net any sales at all. And if sales are disappointingly low, you better have a quick, backup plan or the client will do some simple comparative maths and walk away (i.e. sales versus your fee).

Digital marketing on a shoestring

I come from a content marketing perspective and to me you write good copy that attracts customers, find the customers, engage them and get the sales. I used to work for huge brands with lots of money to throw into marketing activities, but when I'm managing the whole process for a small business, I have to roll my sleeves up and do what I can with a very small budget. 

But that's fine, because that's my personal journey. I set up my own website and ranked it all by myself. I built my own reputation from zilch, so I can do this again and again.

Simples as the meerkat said. But not really simple if the client gives you very little time. All this A/B testing people are raving about is time consuming and most clients want to see results pretty quickly, they are not impressed if you take a guru stance and ask for 6 months to calibrate the campaign, you are lucky if you get 3. 

One of my clients wanted a monthly report, which is a pretty tough call if they have just hired you and they have done zero social media beforehand. So you do your best, scratch your head, use any resources you can think of and try to educate your client so they can actually follow what you are doing, which might buy you a bit of time and some respect/empathy. 

But it might not work and you have to use all the knowledge you have and some to pull a rabbit out of the SEO hat (an ethical, white hat, of course). And it never stops, because Google is relentlessly changing ranking criteria. You need to keep learning or you are obsolete in a matter of weeks. Which is fine by me - internet addict and compulsive learner rolled into one small package.

Sometimes I'm allowed to use paid tools, but what if they don't perform? When the editor of an email marketing system refused to work for several days, I had to design email marketing campaigns by rewriting a template's html code. Which is pretty tedious, but brings me back full circle because that's how I designed my professional website in 2008 and before that, that's how I used to manage my fun London Cheapskate website in 2001.

So the moral of this tale is that reality is very distant from digital theory. Unless you work for 'moneybags', you'd better work out which free tools can help you do your job.

LinkedIn, B2B, email marketing law, my business bootcamp & mavericks

So far I have done SEO work for B2C businesses, but my own business is B2B. I sell writing, editing, design and optimization services (including content marketing, SEO, social media, PR/reputation management) to businesses.

LinkedIn, the most popular social media platform among professionals and industry leaders, is where B2B businesses (I'm a small fish there!) engage through content (including Powerpoint presentations, articles, videos, infographics, etc.) and conversations.

I love LinkedIn, although I'm often irritated by people who mistake it as a hard sales tool to flog their wares. This is a no-no and in most groups these transparent efforts are flagged by members or the group's manager as promotions. 

LinkedIn is the perfect digital platform to create and nurture relationships - it's not a tool for direct marketing or spam. Yet, I get sales emails from members of groups who think they can just email everybody in the group to plug their product/services. This is not acceptable.

There are rules and laws regulating email marketing in the UK, so if you want to dabble in it, please visit the ICO's website and proceed accordingly. If you are not based in the UK and want to trade in the UK, you need to read it too. (If you are wondering, ICO is the UK’s independent authority dealing with information rights.)

Engaging potential customers on social media - aka the soft sale

As I've mentioned before, sharing content and expertise are efficient ways to find customers through LinkedIn. It has worked for many businesses and my own. Sharing expertise is a straightforward process, but what about content? You can share a link to your blog, an infographic, a photo or give away a pdf report through your website. This is a legal and acceptable way to get email addresses and build a customer database. You don't have to write your pdf/ebook from scratch, think content re-purposing, basically recycling articles you have written in a new form with an eye-catching design.

You can also refresh old content - unless the topic has dried up, all you need to do it to update it with current trends. A pdf can also be the resume' of a book you want to sell, a taster you give away to entice readers to get the full Monty. Or you could prepare a presentation in Powerpoint and upload it to Slideshare, then share the link on LinkedIn.

Do you feel some people don't get you? 

Apparently, I'm a maverick. A former client once defined me as a pair of safe hands, but the impression I give to people who glance at my CV is that I'm a maverick. I'm seen as a maverick even when I make comments/offer ideas that make business sense. Is it because I'm a foreigner, is it because I'm a woman? 

I recently realised that there are marketing managers out there who haven't got a clue about digital marketing. Some bluff their way, others hire consultants and believe anything that these people tell them. Which is fine if they picked the right consultants. I will say it again, SEO is an unregulated industry and there a plenty of cowboys out there. I can suss them out as I can analyse a website's structure and see if the work has been done or not. As I mentioned before, in one case a poncy London agency had claimed authorship of the very technical content of a website, which had been written by the client. And to add insult to injury, they had done zero SEO work but billed for it.

Latest example is a marketing manager dismissing digital badges just because this person didn't understand them. Most marketeers know what their value is in engagement and brand promotion, especially with young customers.

So again, a word of warning, before you snob the one-man band SEO consultant for a shiny agency, make sure you know what you are paying for. Maybe they have better offices, but that doesn't guarantee a job well done. And if you are maverick and people don't get you, don't fret, it's their loss not yours. You don't want to work for morons or the client from hell.

Business Ignition Bootcamp - what I have learnt

I have just completed a virtual bootcamp with Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing, which was very interesting as I learnt more about starting/running a business. I won one of 200 places worldwide and all the hard work was worth it as I learnt about the five Business Model Components from Randy 

Komisar's and John Mullins’ Getting to Plan B - basically the Revenue Model, the Gross Margin Model, the Working Capital Model, the Operating Model and the Financing Model.

I enjoyed it much more than studying economics at university because the theory was applied to real businesses (case studies and my own business). It was intense and culminated into a 'graduation' project in which participants formed teams to draft a marketing strategy for a non-profit organisation.

With this new perspective, I will surely find other ways to assess businesses. What the course confirmed is that with digital businesses you can achieve massive savings in the working capital and operating models - you can really reinvent the business wheel and slash costs with a bit of creativity. I have come away with a few insights, some from the course, others from the participants - we networked a lot in the forums.