The best tips for online writing with reference to famous celebrities (Article for training purposes)

July 19, 2011 By 1 Comment

Writing online, optimising for search engines and marketing your digital content via social media isn’t rocket science. In fact, the basics of digital journalism, SEO and getting seen on Facebook or Twitter are really simple, but it’s the rigorous application of them that can prove problematic for a lot of people. But you can learn how to nail your blog posts, get ranked first on Google and become a social networking expert by learning from generic celebrity X.

Yellow Journalism

 

Discovering, sourcing and verifying articles:

There are a number of ways for online journalists to discover promising new stories. In addition to building contacts the traditional way, it’s possible to use social networking tools such as Twitter Search or Google Trends to monitor for a sudden surge in traffic for a term or phrase. And social networks can also be incredibly useful for finding people to quote or interview, in addition to specific tools for journalists, such as Newsbasis or Help A Reporter Out.

Using data in this way can be a temptation to emulate a content farm, but can also be useful for quality, investigative journalism and great content.

 

SEO

Delivering online journalism and SEO content:

Make sure your articles are written for people first, but ensure that search engines are also included in your audience with a few basic steps, such as including your keyword early in your article, ideally with a link to a relevant part of your site and the desired anchor text. And don’t forget to put your keyword first in your short and relevant headline.

Research variations on your keyword or phrase to avoid repetition, and don’t be tempted to just stuff your content with the same keyword over and over again as it won’t increase your ranking, but will annoy your readers. If you’re looking for relevant keywords, you can use Google’s keywords tool to find which are the subject of popular searches, whether for global or local audiences. You can also use H1, H2 and H3 tags on your site to ensure the right sections are highlighted.

Social Media Day

 

Social Media and inbound links

Social Media won’t necessarily help you rank higher in Google, but it can drive traffic to your site, and also help to get content indexed more quickly by the search engines. You can post links to your content to Twitter, Facebook and Google+, and you should find that it appears in search results faster, particularly if it is repeated by popular Twitter users.

You can also gain inbound links by posting comments on relevant blogs in the same subject area as your article, as long as you leave genuine and interesting comments and your article is relevant. You can also email the bloggers and website owners who run sites in your area of expertise and ask if they’d be interested in linking to your article, quoting from it, or even offering to guest post for them.

The important thing is not to spam either your social networks or fellow bloggers, and not to worry too much about whether links are DOFollow or NOFollow – a natural ratio of incoming links includes both, so you’ll look like a spammer if you only have one.

 

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimisation, social media marketing, Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

Tempted to dismiss social media marketing as ‘just common sense’

June 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The inevitable backlash against social media specialists has been growing recently. The problem seems mainly to stem from self-described ‘social media experts’ who aren’t able to back up their claims, despite the fact the same is true for a lot of other people attempting to promote themselves in other professions. For the record, the only time terms such as ‘expert’ or ‘thought leader’ should really be used is in reference to someone other than yourself!

One of the main reasons given for dismissing social media expertise is that ‘social media marketing is just common sense’. And despite the fact I’m hired to work for clients in the social media field, I’d say that’s true to some extent. The basic principles of social media such as being interesting, engaging in conversation etc are pretty much common sense – so I don’t need to run through the whole list.

But if common sense basic principles are enough to do without specialists then explain the following:

  • Budgeting is common sense but we still have accountants and financial advisors (and high levels of personal debt)
  • Being fit and healthy is common sense but we still have coaches and trainers.
  • Avoiding addictive substances is common sense but we still have problems with caffeine, nicotine, alcohol etc.

I think you might get my point, but essentially you can boil anything down to common sense – running the country, curing world hunger, or having a happy relationship and family life.

But we hire external experts because we either need them to help us plan how to do it, to support us in doing it, or to kick us into ensuring we do it. We hire them because they live and breathe that subject and will help us to surpass the common sense bits and take us into a more efficient and effective area.

And common sense is a rarely used tool.

I’ll leave it to someone like Mark Earls to fully explain how many of the decisions we post rationalise as ‘common sense’ are actually the result of other factors, such as following the herd.

And plenty of people have looked at why businesses regularly fail at anything approaching common sense. In fact corporations are often legally prevented from some common sense actions.

Common Sense

Common sense tends to be something that we refer to in hindsight, normally in response to a mistake. And often in response to mistakes in marketing and particularly in social media. We’ll ask why someone didn’t use their common sense, and inevitably see someone else do a similar thing within hours.

So the next time you find someone dismissing social media marketing, or anything else, as common sense, ask yourself how many qualified specialists they’ve dealt with in the last 24 hours. And if you’re worried about ‘social media experts’ the clue is to not look at their self-chosen title, but to look at their work, their references, their reputation, and their results. If that’s all missing, it isn’t a problem with social media, it just conforms to Sturgeons Law like everything else.

 

Filed Under: social media marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

No more social media excuses…

January 21, 2011 By 2 Comments

If you’re still thinking that your industry, business or employees aren’t able to use social networks and social media marketing effectively, you might want to take a look at this:

Army Social Media Handbook 2011

View more documents from U.S. Army.

Yep,that’s the U.S Army Social Media Handbook, January 2011, from the official slideshare account of the U.S Army. And not only that but they’re actively asking for feedback on it.

And if that’s spurred you into action, but you’d like some assistance, I’m always happy to help!

Filed Under: Social Media Guidelines, social media marketing, social networks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Report shows social companies make more money

January 10, 2011 By 2 Comments

A new report by McKinsey shows that ‘fully networked enterprises are not only more likely to be market leaders or to be gaining market share but also use management practices that lead to margins higher than those of companies using the Web in more limited ways.’ Or, in non-consultant speak – by being social inside and outside your company, you’ll make more money, and be able to get higher profits.

Cash Money by jtyerse on Flickr (CC Licence)

'Cash Money' by jtyerse on Flickr (CC Licence)

Networked enterprises are using collaborative technology and techniques to connect internal employees, and also to improve communication with customers, suppliers and partners. And the report also notes that the trend for using these tools is following an S-curve, which means rapid adoption by a lot of companies as they realise they can earn more.

Want to become social?

There are a couple of elements missing from the McKinsey report summary – firstly, it’s not just enough to roll out some new social technology. It won’t do anything for your business just sitting there, and that includes customer social outreach like blogs, social media, video sharing etc.

Ideally you should plan for the best and most effective social technologies which will have an impact on your employees and your customers, and the ways in which they will need to be encouraged, maintained, and evolved over the time. That might sound scary, but it’s actually a part of the process which I love – essentially putting together what your customers want, what your employees want, and how that can create revenue for your business. And if you’d like some assistance, then look for someone with experience of rolling out new social technology and knowledge transfer.

Then there’s the willingness to experiment, take risks, and also embrace the occasional failure. Too many companies are paralysed by fear of failing, when any social iniative carries an inherent flaw which you’ll never get rid off – dealing with humans! The effective route is not to avoid collaboration and social initiatives, but to start simple and plan 2 or 3 initiatives in the short term. One of those new ideas which takes off will more than compensate for the others – and in addition to productivity and revenue increases, it’ll also pave the way for more successes in the future, as long as you continue to evolve and progress it.

There’s an almost overwhelming abundance of opportunities out there, and keeping it simple and effective is key, with the agility to help it evolve and change your business for the better.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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