Tag Archives: Google

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Content Marketing: Three Books, One Review

Content Marketing Book ReviewsGet Content, Get Customers: Turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing

Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett are the co-authors of this 2009 book. Joe runs the Content Marketing Institute. He lectures around the world on the subject and produces an enewsletter with tips and ideas for content marketers. This book is much like his blog, full of great content delivered in such a way that I felt like I joined a conversation half way through. If you want to know what content marketing is, I suggest you peruse Joe’s blog, which is current.

Content Marketing: Think like Publisher – How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social Media

Rebecca Lieb wrote this 2012 book. If you have a print background and are trying to shift into online marketing, this book will make sense to you. It may be the place to start if you’ve been hiding your head in the sand hoping that online marketing would go away.

Content Chemistry: An Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing

Andy Crestodina wrote this 2012 book. Google Andy, you’ll discover that he takes his own advice. Always a good sign. You’ll find his twitter handle, Google + account etc. Of course, using his name as the keyword phrase is not a best practice. He makes a sound case for doing some detective work to identify the keyword phrases that will deliver traffic and with the right content conversions.

His book really is a how-to book, with charts,lists, exercises, and a chemistry analogy that had my hyperventilating until I read it. If like me you skipped chem in high school, do not fear. Andy’s analogy makes sense when you read it. As does his book from front to back cover.

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Keywords that Keep on Giving

Cover of "Shane"

Cover of Shane

This is my less than regular report on the keywords that keep driving traffic to my site. Most are long-tail words that I never thought were significant traffic drivers. The movie Big Miracle, the one about the three whales trapped in the ice in Alaska continues to drive traffic with phrases like “Sarah Palin, Big Miracle” or “Russian Icebreaker Captain.” I can track the film’s openings around the world, and the release of the DVD. For about 10 days after there are spikes in traffic.

“Drive Shane” is another pair of keywords that spike traffic. I searched using the coupling just to see what people might find. [I was afraid the terms meant something other than the name of two films, if you know what I mean.] But no, it turns out, that I’m not the only one who saw parallels between the movie Shane and the movie Drive.

My traffic building rule of thumb: If you are interested in a topic, write about it, because someone else is too. The real challenge is connecting the thing you like to messages that aren’t related. If you can connect popular culture to your product, concept or point of view, then traffic will increase to your site.

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Testing HootSuite

Efficiency is cascading messages across social networks. In communication terms, however, that’s like substituting a doctor’s script for a billet-doux. HootSuite has a lot going for it, but its integration with WordPress is not one of them.

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TTs – Trending Topics

I woke up this morning and took at look at trendsmap.com. Not surprisingly #thehungergames is a trending topic in Canada. There are times you do not have to look at the map to guess what will trend: The opening of a Harry Potter movie, a presidential election, an Arab spring.

Then there are days like today when a trending topic is totally unexpected – inapropriate. Yes, the misspelled inapropriate is a TT on a global scale. I admit that one intrigued me. So I opened it up and discovered that autocorrect Twitter feed has captured the imagination of the online world. Et voila a trending topic.

SF Trending Topics: "Biking Directions"

SF Trending Topics: "Biking Directions" (Photo credit: Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious)

Making a topic trend has become a social game among fandoms. This past week, one fandom in the UK and France had arranged to push a phrase into the TT stratosphere. The term was defined, a time was set and boom, the topic began to trend. That group, however, had not reached the US fandom, which while celebrating the same event, had chosen another term to push. The fandom had in fact created competing TTs, undermining their efforts on a global scale. Both were successful on a regional scale.

The manipulation of Trending Topics – a marketers dream – but another reason for online users to be skeptical.

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Pinterest’s Facebook Connection

By definition, social networks are closed communities, analogous to systems. The communities may overlap to varying degrees. Shared interests or connections are the key to membership in a social network. Take a moment to consider the number of social networks to which you belong. My list begins with family. I have been working contracts recently, so my “work” social network, is actually a number of unique circles, one of which overlaps with a network of friends of long-standing. I suppose I could say I have one network called friends, but unlike Facebook, my friends don’t all move in the same circles. My friends network is really a collection of circles within circles, with only the slightest overlap.

That was a description of my 3D living relationship to social networks, which, you will note, I could not describe without mentioning one virtual network Facebook. Facebook is fast becoming the most open closed network in the world. That is driving me crazy. Just as I do in 3D I want to control who knows whom within my social networks – and not because I have something to hide. This desire to contain has nothing to do with kinks, but has everything to do with public presentation. That need to make a positive first impression is the reason that Linkedin works. Who you are on Linkedin is not who you are on Facebook or YouTube. Just as who you are at work is not who you are at home with friends. Unfortunately Facebook’ is fast becoming ubiquitous.

That is the reason that I hate Pinterest and I haven’t even joined yet. Although I received 6 invitations this morning from some auto-responder function with diarrhea. Every one of the crafted-to-be-warm-and-welcoming robotic messages explained that the only method for creating a Pinterest account was to use my Facebook login. Son of a tetra-bite, I don’t want to give one more external online entity permission to access my Facebook profile. Pinterest claims it won’t post messages to my Facebook wall – slippery slope folks: Because Facebook makes it so hard to undo anything – even deleting a Facebook page.

I am a social integration specialist. The irony of my absolute loathing of the Let’s-build-our-site-so-people-ca-log-on-with-Facebook trend and the fact that I advise folk how to integrate social networks is not lost on me.

So Pinterest here I come. I feel like I have sold my soul to the devil.