THINKing » Blogs http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog My CreativeTeam Thinks About Creativity, Marketing, PR & Social Media Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:40:12 +0000 en hourly 1 Calling All Guest Bloggers http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/calling-all-guest-bloggers/ http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/calling-all-guest-bloggers/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:13:34 +0000 Harry Hoover http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=2812
Photo credit: EmmiP from morguefile.com

Here’s a shout out to all guest bloggers. This is a new year and I want new voices here on THINKing.

You may be asking, “why would you want to write for this blog?” We had about 200,000 visitors to the site last year. So, it is a decent sized audience for your writing. We covered a variety of marketing related topics, ranging from advertising, PR and social media to creativity,  branding and writing. So, you will find a receptive audience for those topics.

Convinced? Read on.

If you have an idea for a guest post, here is what I want from you. First, send me a brief outline of your idea with reasons why your post would be a fit for our blog. This should include an explanation of who you are and why you are qualified to write the piece.

Let me know if this is a single post or part of a series of up to three posts that you propose. Final posts should be no more than 750 words, so point me to examples of pieces you have written in the 350 – 750 word range.

Oh, and I don’t want commercials for your company or yourself.

That’s it. Easy, right?

Times a-wasting. Send the information to me, harry at my-creativeteam.com.

 

Other Posts You Might Like

]]> http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/calling-all-guest-bloggers/feed/ 1 Brands Need A Home http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/brands-need-a-home/ http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/brands-need-a-home/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:47:31 +0000 Harry Hoover http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=2599
Photo credit: clarita from morguefile.com

Many brands are investing a lot of time and money into social networks, almost to the point of ceding control to another entity. It’s time to rethink this.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t participate on platforms like Facebook and Google +. I am just issuing a warning that it is not a good idea to become too intertwined in something controlled by someone else. Facebook and Google + are free platforms, and as such they can make the rules. Therein lies the problem.

Take for instance Facebook’s decision to remove the discussion tab from pages. Says Inside Facebook,

The in-house app, also known as Discussion Boards, allows Pages to host simple forums. However, Facebook says “The best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your wall”. It will therefore eliminate the Discussions app, despite AppData showing that it has 22 million monthly active users.

Well, there are a lot of Facebook page administrators who have spent literally years using this application. Some have used it for its threaded discussion ability. What happens to the archives? Our friends at SocialFish don’t like this much either.

It doesn’t matter to Facebook that it’s much easier for people interested in ongoing discussions to follow an archived, threaded discussion format. Or that it’s much easier to have an actual discussion format, not Facebook’s ever-changing, secretly-algorithmed wall post format. What’s easy or useful for users is not Facebook’s concern; Facebook cares about Facebook. Period.

All brands are in danger here, but particularly smaller ones. For months, I have warned friends who own small businesses that they need a digital home besides Facebook. I encourage them to at least set up a free WordPress blog if they can’t afford to have someone build them a website. Your site should be the hub – not a spoke – of your content marketing. You should use social networks as a sidewalk back home, not the other way around. Or, someday, your brand could be homeless.

Other Posts You Might Like

]]> http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/brands-need-a-home/feed/ 1 Top 10 Posts To Improve Your Writing http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/top-10-posts-to-improve-your-writing/ http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/top-10-posts-to-improve-your-writing/#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:50:37 +0000 Harry Hoover http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=2505
Photo credit: alvimann from morguefile.com

Top 10 Story Starter Tips For Blocked Bloggers - Are you blogged out? Got writer’s block big time? Never fear, your doctor of creativity is here. I have some big time block busters.

7 Tips To Bust Writer’s Block - The toughest thing about writing a news release is getting started. But writing doesn’t have to be hard. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you beat writer’s block.

Top 11 Posts To Improve Your Blog’s Content – To help you in developing compelling content, today we provide you a list of the top 11 online resources to help you improve your writing skills.

How To Be A More Compelling Writer - We’re examining the ways to make your blog more compelling.  A number of Twitterati responded to my request for their ideas. The quality of writing was on their minds.

How To Write Tweets That Get Noticed - The goal is to write the perfect tweet, a tweet that can reach everybody, can be retweeted again and again, a tweet that will expand the tweeter’s reputation. How can you possibly write a tweet like this? It’s simple when you consider and understand two important rules: readability and retweetability.

Content Is King - You can blog all day long, but unless your content is consistently great, your blog will become roadkill on the information highway. What must you do to have great content? I’m glad you asked.

Top 7 Rules For Creating Compelling Headlines - You can write the best email, ad, article or blog post ever and no one will read it if you have a horrid headline. Your headline is the first impression, which must entice the reader to take the next step.

Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say – Jargon and corporate buzzwords can quickly kill your prose.

Get Active – Want to improve your writing fast? Use active voice.

Tell Me A Story - Since the dawn of time mankind has been a sucker for a story. We may be wearing synthetics now instead of skins, but that one truth has not changed. Whether you are communicating with employees, customers or the media, a story has the most power.

Other Posts You Might Like

]]> http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/top-10-posts-to-improve-your-writing/feed/ 0 7 Strategies For Employee Communication Through Social Media – Part 2 http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/7-strategies-for-employee-communication-through-social-media-part-2/ http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/7-strategies-for-employee-communication-through-social-media-part-2/#comments Thu, 19 May 2011 12:30:27 +0000 Harry Hoover http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=2315 We talked in Part 1 about the first four strategies for utilizing social media as an employee communications tool:

  • Establish Clear Ownership
  • Use Protected Twitter Accounts
  • Use RSS Feeds
  • Develop An Internal-Only Blog

Here’s Part 2:

Bring Social Media Reports To Regular Meetings

(source)

In some companies, social media (whether in the form of blogs, Twitter, RSS or Facebook) is an island unto itself, a hermetically sealed, back-room “experiment” that no one else in the company interacts with or hears about. This is a mistake! The whole point of corporate social media is to improve communication and performance throughout the company.

Whoever is in charge of corporate social media should be bringing reports to regular company meetings and contributing insights based on what was learned. This can be employee tweets, blog comments, shared stories – literally anything that sheds light on how the company can change or improve in some meaningful way.

Obtain Executive Buy-In

(source)

Social media will not go very far in a corporate setting without buy-in from top executives. Absent this key support, whomever is in charge of social media will constantly be fighting an uphill battle, struggling to make suggestions or changes on the basis of an initiative only they (or at most, a few non-senior managers) support. Left to continue this way, your social media communications program will stall and stagnate.

Don’t make this mistake. From day one, let it be known that everyone, from the CEO on down, is fully behind the social media initiative (both in spirit and in terms of resources allocated.) Only then will the company embrace social media as a lasting fixture instead of a passing fad.

Not For Entry-Level Employees

(source)

Finally, it must be noted that social media is not suited for entry-level employees or interns. Whomever is responsible for the initiative should be, if not a senior executive, then at least someone with a long history at your organization. Someone who thoroughly understands its culture and has interacted with all of the various departments in the past.

The reason this is so important is that the entire organization must be on board. If one or two departments are not committed to social communications and refuse to participate, the entire initiative has failed. Moreover, the job of running and monitoring your internal social media channels is very comprehensive – someone fresh out of college or with only a few months experience at the company will likely be overwhelmed.

Editor’s Note: today’s post is from guest author, Bryan Cochand, a freelance writer for Adobe. Adobe’s Online Marketing Suite helps businesses with their search marketing efforts.

 

Other Posts You Might Like

]]> http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/7-strategies-for-employee-communication-through-social-media-part-2/feed/ 1 7 Strategies For Employee Communication Through Social Media – Part 1 http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/7-strategies-for-employee-communication-through-social-media-part-1/ http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/7-strategies-for-employee-communication-through-social-media-part-1/#comments Tue, 17 May 2011 12:30:27 +0000 Harry Hoover http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=2302

Social media has come a long way in the last five years. Once used to kill time and stay entertained, the social web is now deeply ingrained in the day-to-day operations of businesses large and small. Communications is no exception – in fact, it’s one of the premier uses of social media in the corporate environment. Instead of relying on outdated bulletin boards and impersonal memos, tech-savvy executives are now using online tools to communicate more quickly, more personally and more effectively.

Here are seven strategies for implementing social media communication in your company:

Establish Clear Ownership

(source)

One of the biggest problems companies have when implementing social media at the corporate level is that no one department has clear ownership of it. Who’s responsible? Is it marketing, HR, senior management, or perhaps a newly anointed person/department? There is no one “right” answer, but the old saying applies: when it’s everyone’s responsibility, it’s no one’s responsibility.

When a company’s social presence is run by different departments, it invariably falls short of its full potential. Each week sees the birth of new “initiatives” and experiments, rather than the continuation of one solid direction or approach. As a result, social media fails to become the rich communication channel it has the potential to be. Pick one person (or department) to be in charge and give them authority over the channel.

Protected Twitter Accounts

(source)

One of the quickest ways to immediately leverage social media for corporate communications is Twitter. But there’s a twist: established businesses shouldn’t sign up for the same public Twitter accounts that individuals use. Rather, executives will want to use what’s known as a “protected” Twitter account (explained here.)

Basically, a protected Twitter account is one where only approved followers (employees and colleagues in this case) can see your Tweets. Once established, your protected Twitter account can be used to share anything of company importance: memos, reminders, event invitations, etc. You can even go a step further and establish protected Twitter accounts for each department. This way, everyone gets tweets that are very pointed and relevant to their job duties without getting overwhelmed by things outside of their purview.

Corporate RSS Feeds

(source)

RSS feeds offer another way to rapidly disseminate information across the company. RSS (which literally stands for “really simple syndication”) enables executives to create “feeds” that employees and co-workers subscribe to via tools like Google Reader. What can you syndicate using RSS? Actually, just about anything you wish.

Today’s RSS technologies permit you to syndicate text, videos, audio files and virtually anything else you can send along in an e-mail or instant message. The benefit of using RSS instead is that you can create the content once (say, a reminder or memo) and effortlessly blast it out to everyone in a completely streamlined and trackable format.

Internal Company Blog

(source)

If you aren’t ready to experiment with Twitter and RSS yet (or even if you are) a much simpler way to bring social media into your communications program is just to set up an internal company blog. This is distinct from any customer-facing blog you might have. Rather than publishing PR stories about the company, your internal blog is meant to convey information that’s meaningful to employees and executives.

A major plus of having an internal blog is allowing employees to comment on each post and paying attention to what they say. This is a priceless form of feedback – encourage people to freely and candidly share their thoughts on company blog posts. Furthermore, use these responses to drive new initiatives or employee programs based on what you learned.

More strategies in Part 2. Stay tuned.

Editor’s Note: today’s post is from guest author, Bryan Cochand, a freelance writer for Adobe. Adobe’s Online Marketing Suite helps businesses with their search marketing efforts.

Other Posts You Might Like

]]> http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/7-strategies-for-employee-communication-through-social-media-part-1/feed/ 4 Market Successfully In Today’s Interactive Environment http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/market-successfully-in-today%e2%80%99s-interactive-environment/ http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/market-successfully-in-today%e2%80%99s-interactive-environment/#comments Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:22:36 +0000 Harry Hoover http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=2176

I just did a session called Market Successfully In Today’s Interactive Environment for the Bank of Commerce’s School of Commerce (SOC). The SOC is designed to help independently owned businesses with the key challenges they have, ranging from financing to marketing.

The presentation covered how to develop your social media plan with key discussion centering on research, audience definition, goal-setting and measurement.

I developed a special report to go with the presentation and you can download it here if you are interested. Do you agree with my approach? Did I leave anything out? Please let me know.

Other Posts You Might Like

]]> http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/market-successfully-in-today%e2%80%99s-interactive-environment/feed/ 0 Playing Both Sides Of The Table http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/playing-both-sides-of-the-table/ http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/playing-both-sides-of-the-table/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:58:34 +0000 Harry Hoover http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=2118

Editor’s Note: this is a guest article from Danny Wong, who manages Media Relations for Blank Label Group, and he helped to co-found the group’s startups Blank Label, Thread Tradition, and RE:custom. He’s also played on the other side of the table writing for outlets like the HuffingtonPost, ReadWriteWeb and TheNextWeb.

How to Become a Member of the Media & Play on Both Sides of the Table

The marketers that have adapted to the times are the ones that are empathetic to all parties when it comes to messaging, meaning the businesses and their customers, the sponsors and their audience, and especially the companies and the media. Marketers that look to leverage the media in more creative ways than the out-dated press release have decided to join the ranks of the writers and have learned to appreciate the media more, understanding how they could better handle their interactions with the media.

Marketers Become Bloggers

In marketing, one of the hotter trends is strategic content creation for the purposes of education, engagement and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But when marketers become the content creators, they start to understand some of the basic principles of writing, which include knowing your audience and creating relevant and useful content for them. With those principles in mind, they’re more careful in how they pitch the media to try to garner stories and attention for their business, making sure, more often than not, that their pitching a writer whose audience would appreciate the reading the story.

Marketers Join the Media

After marketers establish their business’ blog with build credibility with quality content, they can be considered “thought leaders” in their space, giving them leverage, making it easier for them to then start writing for niche blogs. Then after building a writing portfolio, they can move onto write with more established websites and news outlets to further demonstrate their extensive knowledge for the industry they work in, adding more credibility for their business since external contributors are always afforded a nice little byline to plug their bio including detail about their associated companies.

It’s All About Networking

So after getting yourself established as a thought leader through your business’ blog, then writing posts with niche blogs, and then authoring stories on more established and widely read publications, you become connected with the influentials in the media who are more receptive to you because you’re “one of them.” Of course, you try to stay very professional, making sure your efforts to grow your business don’t interfere with you contributing value to the publications you write for. But you will have valuable connections that will be more willing to help you in growing your business because of the relationships you have. There will also certainly be disclosures noting your association with a publication if they decide to publish an editorial story on you, but in most cases, that’s purely just standard practice and readers enjoy the story nonetheless.

Getting Better at PR

While now you’ll have all this established credibility and a stronger network, you’ll also have improved your communication skills with the media because as a writer yourself, you’ll know how to craft better messages to get your point across and sell the better points vs. the weaker ones. As mentioned earlier, you will be more empathetic to what audiences want to hear and what writers write about, so you’ll know how to craft stories to be relevant in a pitch for a writer, and when it’s at all appropriate to pitch a story.

Other Posts You Might Like

]]> http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/playing-both-sides-of-the-table/feed/ 2 Where Is B2B Blogging Going? http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/where-is-b2b-blogging-going/ http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/where-is-b2b-blogging-going/#comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:05:54 +0000 Harry Hoover http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=2051

What are the business-to-business blogging trends for 2011? You can find out in this new paper released just this morning by my digital colleagues Tony Karrer, Ph.d and Tom Pick. They asked some of the top bloggers to prognosticate about what will happen in B2B blogging. I was honored to be among those who are included in the final paper.

What do I think we’ll be seeing this year? Here are a few thoughts I shared in the paper:

In 2011, we’ll see an increase in the number of B2B blogs, particularly among Inc. 500 and Fortune 500 companies. A pair of studies by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has taken a look at these groups and their blogging habits. Since 2007, there has been steady growth in the percentage of these companies blogging. At the end of 2009, 45% of Inc. 500 companies were blogging. In 2010, 23% of Fortune 500 corporations report having blogs.”

I hope you’ll download the paper and check it out.

Other Posts You Might Like

]]> http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/where-is-b2b-blogging-going/feed/ 3 Show Me The (Social Media) Money http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/show-me-the-social-media-money/ http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/show-me-the-social-media-money/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 21:19:32 +0000 Harry Hoover http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=2029 Show Me The Social Media Money

Reader Sally Phillips, the director of marketing at business intelligence company, Mariner, dropped me a note the other day in response to our piece called, Social Media Attack Plan. Sally has been thinking a lot about B2B social media and wanted my thoughts on two questions:

1.   How do you monetize B2B social networking?

2.   How do you measure effectiveness of B2B social networking?

Well, you know me. If I don’t have an opinion, give me a minute and I’ll formulate one. So, I waded into the discussion.

Sally, I think retail oriented businesses have the easiest job of monetizing social media. Small businesses in particular can do specials for Facebook fans, or utilize check-in promotions via Foursquare, etc. B2B businesses, I think, should consider social media more akin to public relations than marketing and sales. For instance, there are many journalists on Twitter and Quora with whom you can connect and possibly gain media coverage. That would be a good item to track for the B2B organization.

As for measuring effectiveness, I think you have to set objectives as you do with any other marketing or PR program. Once these are set, you can measure the following to determine if you are achieving those goals:

- growth in the number of followers

- number of interactions (comments, retweets, etc.)

- post ratings

- click-through rates

- website/blog visits from social media

- conversion rate

- time spent on site

- bookmarks

- feedback

- use of coupons, promotions delivered via social media, etc.

Like everyone else, Sally says, her company is struggling with how to allocate resources most effectively. When the goal is sales, it is hard to justify too much investment in the Twitters of the world. But Mariner is planning an increased blogging effort this year.  I’m a big believer in blogs for all organizations and think they are particularly appropriate for B2B companies.

What do you think?

Other Posts You Might Like

]]> http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/show-me-the-social-media-money/feed/ 1 Social Media Attack Plan – Part 2 http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/social-media-attack-plan-part-2/ http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/social-media-attack-plan-part-2/#comments Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:30:35 +0000 Harry Hoover http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=1605 social media plan

In part 1, we took a look at the initial elements of your social media plan: research, goal setting and audience definition. Now, let’s look at the rest of the planning process.

Measurement - We talked in part 1 about goal setting. Those goals, we believe, must be achievable, aligned with business objectives, and measurable. Melissa Barker talks in a recent blog post about setting measurable goals. She says:

The challenge for some of these goals, such as engaging with consumers, is to make them specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely (SMART).  In addition, objectives must be established for each type of social media platform in order to maximize results. The following are examples of SMART goals for four popular social media platforms: blogs, microblogs (Twitter), social networking sites, as well as image and video sharing sites.

For blogs, Barker suggests goals could include increases in ratio of posts to comments; an increase in visits; growth in page views; or an increase in RSS subscribers.

One final thought on goals. Don’t just measure and report something for the heck of it. I’ve had clients who requested monthly reports on things that have no material effect on the success of the program. They just wanted to know that we were spending the “appropriate” amount of time on their account.  Make sure what you are measuring aligns with the business objectives you have set for your program.

Tactical Plan – Here’s where the rubber meets the road. You are probably not going to have unlimited internal and external resources, so may we suggest that you select three things and do them well. This means focusing your efforts on the three elements that you believe will have the most impact upon your organization.

Determine who will perform the tactical aspect of your plan.

Get organizational buy-in to ensure that it does dovetail with the appropriate business objectives, and that you’ll have the support for program implementation.

Then, ensure that your social media program is integrated with your existing marketing program.

Related Articles

Social Media Measurement Checklist

Marketers Spending On Social Media For Wrong Reasons

Organizational Buy-In

Other Posts You Might Like

]]> http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/social-media-attack-plan-part-2/feed/ 1