Who is the Content Guru?

Who am I? Why is this blog here?

I am the content guru! In 2003 I found myself in one of those crossroads of life. The result is that I decided to change my profession (I was no longer interested in designing seamless underwear...) and so I started writing about everything ever since.

I have been writing web content and growing my new career along with the field of web marketing. What used to be an esoteric side kick is now a full blown market, that calls for high quality content among the many mediocre writings and digital scribbles of the masses. After 10 years of writing for others and two years of writing for the benefit of my CPU alone (the digital equivalent of a drawer), I have decided to share my experience and to start posting for myself.

Content about anything and everything is what you will find here - all written be moi! No automatic generators! So feel free to read and enjoy. and if you would like me to write up some web content for you, feel free to ask...

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Thursday, January 30, 2014

Great PR Content - My Formula and a Compliment

Its nice to be able to complement colleagues on great work. This time my compliments go to Rebecca Ehrenpreis who wrote a short blog post detailing a new website and a new invention to be found within.
Rebecca writes about a website that helps people find out their ring size. She begins with a personal story, moves on to describe the new product, quotes the company representative and provides users a convenient link to the website. All this is done within a short text and non obtrusive writing that is just a pleasure to read.

what should a great PR text include?
1 - Always keep it short and simple. Your message should stand out and be easy for your readers to find.
2 - Engage your readers so that they can sympathize with the product or service you are promoting. This can be done by telling a personal story or emphasizing a problem that you think your potential audience may have.
3 - Once you put forward the problem at hand, a problem your readers can relate to, all that remains is to offer them a solution on a platter. Describe your product or service in light of its being a solution to the problem raised earlier in the text. Keep the details basic and easy to understand.
4 - Include a short quote from a company representative that elaborates on the benefit for your audience. Putting a name and even a face to a company makes it all more personal. People like to deal with people directly. Talk about just one aspect of the product, which is the main solution relating to the problem at hand. Get your audience to be interested, they can then choose to learn more about your product.
5 - Provide an easy to access link to more information. If your audience wants to learn  more, the path they need to take in order to do so should be clear.

Rebecca used all 5 components of the above detailed formula in her short blog post.
I hope you will also find this post as a useful tool when next posting a PR text.

see Rebecca's ring size post in the link
http://www.beckysbeautytips.com/2014/01/26/an-innovation-for-measuring-your-ring-size/
More about Rebecca
beckysbeautytips.com
more about "Find my Ring size" in the link
http://findmyringsize.com/

Monday, January 27, 2014

How to Get the Gold out of Social Media?

I recently attended a Facebook marketing seminar and one of the things the presenter said was that the real money is not in the social media but needs to be dug out of there.
so Data Mining has a whole new meaning now. Mine the gold out of Facebook and other social media networks means that you need to get people who surf in these networks to click on a link that  gets them out of the social media and into your marketing funnel - a link to a landing page or your website, depends on how you structure your marketing efforts.

But which social network would give your business the best results? There are a few issues to consider before making this choice:

The first instinct is to day - maximum exposure. but then over time we have learned that in order to get good conversion rates, is you can focus on your public, then quality is better than quantity. The internet gives you the ability to focus on your true public. social media networks like Facebook and linked in are able to cut through the masses and sort out those people who care really interested in your information.

Facebook is able to collect many tidbits of information about the combination of interests of its users, so you can really use its campaigning tool to find exactly who you want to approach with your messages. Placing an advert in the news-feed itself guarantees that it is seen also in mobile smart phones and tablets. these are the viewing platforms of the future and will become increasingly important to your business.
Linked in enables membership in targeted groups and you can use their campaigning tools to reach those groups.

Focusing your efforts is also important. It is very difficult to spread the work in all the various social networks. yo have to be efficient and select the network that is best targeted to your specific audience. Facebook has gotten its users used to commercial content, while twitter and linked in are characterized by a public that is more sensitive to marketing.  You have to also think about the type of product and which way to present it will be the most efficient. If you have lots of interesting pictures, you might consider Instagram or Pinterest (e.g these are great platforms for internal designers). If its video, then YouTube is the most powerful channel out there today, and yes, ?I do regard YouTube as a social media network!
Focusing your message also means that you need to repeat it often. setting up an automatic system of adverts and links is part of getting good results. Frequency should not be too often, but you should be exposed again and again to your potential clients. Twitter has the "retweet" system, which enables messages to be repeated again and again in the network.
Focusing means also thinking locally. Local networks may be more powerful in certain markets, so if you want to penetrate them, looking for the strongest local social media or forum is the best solution, and it usually means posting in the local language as well. Professional forums and magazines could prove to be the best communities in which to reach your audience online.

The trick to an efficient and focused campaign is efficient presence. this means that you choose the best two social media networks that are most suited to your product and marketing strategy (see above in focusing), and you remain active in those networks, putting all your efforts into them. In other networks, where you only need to be present (active low scale), will only serve as background to repeating your postings from active networks and linking into your funnel.

Being active means to engage: Put most of your content into the active social network. Take part in discussions, follow group members, respond to posts and create interesting content. Post your own adverts in these networks, pulling readers out of the social media network and into your landing page  in order to provide the reader a more elaborated experience with your specialized marketing content. Invest your dollars in campaigning in the social media network you have selected to be active in.

Being present means links to the active social media or to existing content on the website, with no special effort at new content or paid campaigns.

Selecting the main network to be active in is not so simple anymore. Social media has become a popular and accepted means of communication and not only for the young. If you have never worked with social media before, it is advised to test all the networks in the first month and then select the ones to be active in based on results and achievements of the test campaign. the internet offers great measuring tools that can dig up data on your campaigns into the finest details.

Flexibility is key: One network is hot today and cold the next. If in the past Facebook catered to the young and restless, it is today becoming a mainstream family network and young users go to the smart phone apps Like "Whats app" and Insatgram.  Twitter was all about news when it started, and now no celebrity who respects themselves will be caught without the ability to "tweet" about every step they take. Being aware if these trends and the changing nature of each of the social media networks is key to launching a successful campaign. Using the measurement tools available to day and monitoring achievements will help you maximize your campaign results. watch your campaigns as they develop and steer them in the right direction, making changes as you learn along the way.

Remember that social media marketing is supposed to serve your product and business. Do not create content jsut for the sake of creating content. Do not purchase "likes"  just so you can have thousands of irrelevant people looking at your posts. Make your posts focused to your clientele and give them links into your marketing funnel for maximum results. Dig the gold out of social media, do not stay behind to wallow in the river's mud...


Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Email marketing - recommended frequency and other tips

If you are about to use the email marketing method that send all kinds of emails to people you do not know, you might as well do it right! We all suffer under the flood of information (mostly not requested) that flows into our email and social network walls. If you are a marketer and want to use these tools to expose your product, the least you can do is try not to annoy your potential customers.

A marketing colleague of mine says he does not mind annoying his customers with emails. The way he sees it, if someone does not think that the emails they are receiving is giving them value and if they are annoyed by it, they can unsubscribe. My colleague is big on mass emails on a daily basis, claiming that the high quantity is actually a mechanism to filter out readers who are not interested in his offer. He claims that people who are annoyed with his emails unsubscribe and those that stick to it are the people who will also eventually purchase from him. So by flooding the in-boxes of his potential customers (and annoying them in the process) he claims that he filters the true;y interested parties.

All marketers know that its all about exposure. the more people see your message, the more who will eventually buy into you products. So if a marketer keeps the rate of emailing low, the potential customers will not be seeing the product he or she is selling at all.

So what's the right thing to do? marketers annoy their  potential customers if they email them to much, but it they refrain from doing so, they may be missed entirely. I believe the answer is somewhere in the middle. One should create a graduated funnel to market a product, offering free information along the way and distributing that info with automatic emailing software, but one should not overdo it. As long as you are offering your potential client value, they will stick it out, even if they are a bit annoyed on the way by your emails. so its not only about frequency or about value - its about a good  and balanced combination of both. The golden rule of balancing value and frequency will ensure that you annoy less people, but you also get the clients you want to work with, and who think that they receive the most value from you.

So how can that be done? 10 tips to consider:


  1. Know who your preferred clients are: What is your value proposition and how much you want them to pay for it. Transcend these issues in focused messages in your emails, and those who are not good clients for you will be sorted out once they understand that your value proposition is not what they are looking for.
  2. Strategy and planning: Email marketing is a great and effective marketing tool. But if you want to use it successfully, you need a marketing strategy from day one and a plan that will drive the right customers to your contact lists. Over aggressive marketing can even damage your brand reputation, so make sure you are sending targeted valuable messages to people who are interested in them and who feel that getting your info is making a difference to them. Do not be spontaneous, plan it all out and then work the marketing plan step by step.
  3. Do not email for the sake of emailing: Your messages have to contain value to your readers, or else they will opt out of your list and feel annoyed. Flooding in-boxes for the sake of creating as many emails as possible is not the way to go. You can get great exposure using an emailing tool, but use its ability to give you focused and values exposure rather than a flood of irrelevancy.
  4. Develop a consistent marketing funnel: Offer you client additional value in each additional message. Each message is also targeted to filter out people who are not interested in or unwilling to pay what we will charge for our services. The further along a client is in the funnel, the more suitable that client is for us, but the more suitable we are form them as well. 
  5. Keep your messages focused and interesting: Make it easy for people to understand what value you are offering and how they can get it. Make your emailing an easy read. The message should not be too long before you get to the point. Write with humor, make your massages fun. Keep the spirit of the messages positive.
  6. Timing is everything: Do not send too many emails. Daily messages is not the way to go. Think about the value you are offering and what would be a reasonable and valuable time span to receive it in.
  7. Keep is clear and simple: If your grandma can understand what you are writing about and what she needs to do, your message is probably clear and simple. clients will find it easy to get their value from it.
  8. Give before you take: Provide your client with additional value an free information before you ask them to pay money for additional services. If they receive from you, they will find it easier to give back. The value you give them along the marketing funnel should create their loyalty and trust. Generosity is reciprocated. Clients will then feel more comfortable purchasing from you at your desired price.
  9. Call to action: Create a clear style to your message with an obvious heading and a conspicuous call to action , so that people can find it easily and act on it. Its not about being pushy or aggressive, its about providing clear instructions as to the next step. Keep it simple. If people know what to so, they will do it!
  10. Good followup and learning: Use the statistic tool of the emailing programs to see who opened your messages and what they clicked on. what they liked and where are they seeing the value. You can then refine your future messages according to what you learned and improve your marketing even more, to the growing benefit of you and your clients.



Email marketing - recognise the trap that floods your inbox

we all know what its like, we get annoying emails that flood our in-boxes and we do not recall subscribing for them at all... what's worse, even if we request to unsubscribe, our request is not always granted. One might think, this kind of cyber behavior is illegal...well, it;s not! Unfortunately...

The anti spam ruling determines that in order to email any content that is commercial - i.e will induce readers to spend money - then one must get permission to do so. Getting permission is usually achieved in two ways.
1 - an non permitted opt in email that contains a short explanation about the offerings and a request for people to register. this is not very effective, and its seen less and less.
2 - an advert or email with a free gift! One must register in order to receive this gift. once you have registered, you have technically given you permission also for commercial emails and the automatic email marketing tools of today have pulled your email into a mailing list that is usually connected to an automatic chain of commercial emails - hence the flooding of your inbox begins.

you are supposed to be able to unsubscribe from this emailing, and all modern emailing tools have an unsubscribe option. This thing is, that all these tools maintain a list of the emails that unsubscribed. So this means the owner of the list can reuse the addresses in another context, and you continue to get emailing to your inbox, even if you unsubscribed! Furthermore the anti spam regulations allow people to send any kind of advertising emails even without permission, as long as you are not being solicited to spend money directly in these emails - they are covered.

It is unfortunate, but the little people are trapped and there is little one can do to stop the flooding.  Here is what you can do

  • You can mark certain emails as SPAM and hope that the Gmail and other emailing programs will learn and stop sending messages from such addresses to your inbox.
  • You can also unsubscribe consistently - it does eventually lower the amount of emailing you receive. it is advised that you unsubscribe in two ways:
  1. Use the link in the email itself, but make sure to read carefully the instructions so that you will indeed unsubscribe and not resubscribe...these mass email services have tricky mechanisms.
  2. Write a reply email and request to have them stop sending you emails.
  • You can avoid registering your email as much as possible to any free offers and such, and thus not enter the chain at all.
Users of Gmail have a bot of good news, the division of the inbox into 3 categories (primary, social and promotions) mean that usually the promotional mass emails are pushed to the promotions category and you can erase them all in one go! the downside to this new system is that if you  did want to get some promotional information, the email will be indeed found in the promotions section and you need to look for it there in between all the other undesired emailing.

If you are a marketer, remember what its like to have you inbox flooded with junk! using automatic emailing methods is a great way to get exposure to your message and product, I just wish marketers would use this tool with more moderation, so that my inbox would not be flooded with junk, just because I take an interest in what people have to say on the web... lets hope the current flood of junk in everyone's inbox will teach marketers not to flood our inboxes in future.