1.    The Attention Grabbing Title

Your blog post’s title is your first chance at making an impression. In fact, studies show that while 8 out of 10 people will read a title, only 2 of those 10 will read the post. No matter how wonderful and groundbreaking your blog content may be, a bland and boring title will likely result in the post being glanced at and summarily dismissed. A post’s headline can tell readers, “Hey, check me out! I’m fabulous, interesting, and important!” Or it can mumble something, stare at the ground, and blend unnoticed into the background.

A strong blog post title should tell the reader exactly what they should expect to learn, and how reading this post will solve their problems.  It grabs the reader’s attention, intrigues them, and draws them in with a promise of important, valuable information. For example, “BBQ Recipes” gives a vague idea of what’s to come. Spicing it up with “Delicious BBQ Recipes” suggests value to the content within. However, “10 Best BBQ Recipes for Your Memorial Day Cookout” promises valuable content, says exactly what to expect, and tells the reader how this information is relevant to their lives.

2.    Introductions That Draws Readers In

If a salesperson approached you and immediately launched into a speech about their product’s specifications and price, you would likely stop them right there. How can they expect you to give them your money when you have no idea of what the product does, what problems it solves, or why you need it? Your blog post may not be asking for a reader’s money, but you are asking them to invest their time. A strong blog post introduction invites readers in, greets them as a friend, and relates to them. It quickly and effectively explains why the information that follows is important to them, and how the benefits of reading the rest of the post will be well worth their time.

3.    A Concise, Easy to Read Body

The title and introduction have promised readers valuable information, explained how you will solve their problem, and let them know what they can expect to learn. Now, it’s time to deliver on your promise in a simple, concise manner. While it’s fine to add colorful anecdotes and humor, stick to the point and stay on topic. Present information in a way that’s easy to digest; long paragraphs can be overwhelming, while bullet points or subheadings, if appropriate, break information down into bite-sized sections.

4.    An Effective Call to Action

This is your opportunity to encourage your readers to act. Whether you’re inviting them to discuss their reactions in a comment section, to share the post, or to learn more about your area of expertise by visiting your website, be clear about what you want and then make it easy to do. Give them the tools they need, such as a discussion prompt, bold hyperlinks or buttons to automatically share your content with their social networks.

What else would you include in a successful blog post? Tell us in the comments.

Photo via Flickr

Do make separate boards.

Since Pinterest lets you make individual boards for various topics, it behooves you to take advantage of this functionality. Often, those new to the site forget about this very basic function, and instead pin all of their photos to the same board – which isn’t the biggest “don’t” on the Internet by a long shot, but is definitely a huge don’t when it comes to Pinterest.

For example, the Kate Spade New York Pinterest account makes use of this organization to differentiate their fashion pinboard from their travel pinboard, which are both distinct from a third miscellaneous board – all with names branded to match the company’s marketing.

Don’t forget who you’re targeting.

As of January 2012, Pinterest’s user base was still roughly 75 percent female, mostly falling between the ages of 25 and 54. Most social media sites aren’t this heavily skewed to one gender, which means you’ll probably need to adjust your marketing messaging (unless you’re already targeting that particular demographic). That’s not to say that you can’t use Pinterest to reach men, as they do make up a quarter of the site’s user base – but you’re much more likely to see success if you adjust your messaging to match the overwhelming majority of the audience.

Don’t get too pin-happy.

Just as your Twitter followers don’t want to see 15 Tweets from you in an hour, your Pinterest followers don’t want to deal with the clutter you create when you pin one photo a minute, every minute, for the entire day. Use your good judgment, and pin in such a way that you won’t completely overwhelm people into unfollowing your boards.

Do crowdsource.

One of the unique features of Pinterest (well, aside from the entire pinboard concept), is the fact that it allows for pinboards with multiple contributors. Some brands have been taking advantage of this to involve influencers and fans in the content curation process. For example, Whole Foods uses multiple contributors on almost all of their boards.

The little icon next to the number of pins on each board indicates that these allow group contributors, as opposed to solely deriving from the Whole Foods account.

Crowdsourcing can also take the form of asking customers to pin photos of themselves using your product in creative ways — a tactic often used by Pinterest marketers in the food and beauty industries, occasionally integrated into contests and giveaways. However, you will want to proceed with caution if considering this tactic. The Pinterest Acceptable Use Policy draws a very precise line between marketing activities and spamming – you’ll want to familiarize yourself with these rules before launching any form of Pinterest marketing strategy. 

Have you successfully integrated Pinterest into your marketing strategy? Leave us a comment and tell us about it!

You’re boring.

People don’t use Twitter because they want to sit by and idly receive marketing messages. People use Twitter for any of the following purposes: connecting with one another, being entertained, catching up on news, or asking questions. But unless you’re Disney or Microsoft (or another heavy-hitter), the average Twitter user won’t follow you to hear solely about your products.

Make jokes. Post relevant news stories and YouTube videos. Above all, make sure you actually have something to say before you start wildly tweeting here and there. If you’re going to try to compete with news, entertainment, and people’s friends, you’re going to have to put in some time and effort.

You don’t offer value.

Now that you’re not boring, you need to offer your customers some sort of reason to follow you on Twitter. They know who you are and what you sell. But what do they get by following you on Twitter? Exclusive discounts? A direct connection to a customer service representative? Insight into what goes on behind the scenes at your company? If you’re not offering a tangible benefit to your target audience, they’ll quickly start to wonder why they started to follow you in the first place – and the unfollow with come soon after.

You’re antisocial.

“But how could I be antisocial? I’m using social media!” you say. Well. No. There’s a difference between having a Twitter account and actively socializing with your target audience. Are people mentioning or retweeting you? If you’ve never even bothered to check, start there. Check. Start replying to people who are talking to you. This is the cornerstone of social media: having conversations. Most brands won’t get very far if they put out 140-character announcements, rather than 140-character conversation starters. If you are being social but it’s still not working, then perhaps…

You don’t understand your audience.

Your loyal customer base: is it predominantly male or female? On average, how old are they? Most importantly: what time of day do they use Twitter? If your customers generally get on Twitter around 6 or 7 p.m. when they get home from work but you’re posting tweets during business hours, this could account for a large amount of what you’re saying falling on deaf ears. Your audience isn’t going to go out of their way to scroll back six hours through their tweets to see what you’ve been saying – you have to come to them.

Why do you think Twitter marketing campaigns fail? Leave us a comment to let us know!

Photo via Flickr

If you answered approximately 644 million, you’re correct! With half a billion sites to choose from, how does your blog rank? Is your content compelling enough to get visitors to stick around, or do you bore them to sleep right there at their computer monitors? If you suspect your readers are heading to your site to help remedy their insomnia, it’s probably time to reevaluate your efforts with the following tips.

Discover your voice

If you’re writing a blog post, the last thing you want to do is come off as stiff and robotic – after all, this is your chance to humanize your business and connect with an audience. Don’t be afraid to have a personality. Your voice is more than just your writing style. It also encompasses the topics you choose to write about and your tone. So how do you discover a writing voice? The first tip is to start writing the way you talk, since blogging is much less formal than other types of writing. Additionally, if there are bloggers you admire, don’t be afraid to emulate their style (note: this does not mean copying their actual writing or topics, which is plagiarism).

Brainstorm

You know the saying: two heads are better than one. If you’re struggling with content creation, brainstorming with other members of your company can help you develop ideas. Consider input from everyone, regardless of role – you never know who’s going to have the next great idea, and it might be the person you least expect. Plus, you’ll have a much more well-rounded effort if you let everyone have a say in the editorial direction.

Use examples of the best — or worst

Examples help demonstrate what you’re trying to explain, so gather up the companies or products that best carry out the concept you’re discussing and feature them in a post. See our previous posts on social media for higher education and viral marketing campaigns. However, you could also choose to highlight examples of the worst – like we did with 2011′s biggest Twitter mistakes and how to embarrass yourself on Yelp. When picking examples of what not to do, it’s important to communicate the lessons learned and what to do differently to your audience – as opposed to simply “naming and shaming,” which your audience may not see as tasteful.

Pay special attention to the title and first paragraph

Imagine if the title of this blog post had been, “How to Write a Blog Post” and the first sentence had been, “Blog content should be interesting.” Do you think you would have made it far enough to read this sentence, or would you have already been bored to tears? Even if the rest of your post was full of groundbreaking, thought-provoking content, you didn’t set the tone for that. You want people to laugh, gasp, scratch their heads, or possibly even roll their eyes and groan (if puns are your thing) at your blog post opening – as long as there’s a reaction.

How do you keep your blog content relevant and interesting? Leave us a comment to let us know!

Photo via Flickr

If you have an awful website, you’re going to lose customers.

How do you know if your website is awful? If one or more of the following applies to you, you may be in trouble:

Your content is riddled with really obvious grammatical errors.

Some English teachers out there may cringe to read this (cover your eyes if you must): a cornerstone of interesting blogging is writing in a conversational, relatable style – which may occasionally mean bending the rules of grammar a little bit. Like using sentence fragments, for example. However, there are some mistakes that are just plain unforgivable, and may even cause you to forfeit some customers. These include, but are certainly not limited to:

• Confusing “you’re/your,” “there/their/they’re,” or “to/too/two”
• Misuse of apostrophes
• Capitalizing words For No Good Reason
• Misspelled words

 
You don’t need to be a grammar expert to run your site’s content through a spell checker, although remember that spellcheck only catches misspelled words that aren’t words – not misspellings that cause you to use the wrong word. In all cases, you should be proofreading carefully. If you are, you may not run into these problems at all.

Your site doesn’t look professional.

A site doesn’t necessarily need to be flashy or cost a lot of money to get the job done. A good site design is easy to navigate, nice to look at, and – at the very least – fully functional. If your site looks like you signed up for Geocities in 1996 and haven’t touched it since, you’re probably doing yourself more harm than good. Check out some examples of bad site design, and then reevaluate what your site looks like.

Your advertising is overwhelming.

We’re only going to say this once, so pay attention: do not put anything on your homepage that blinks, pops up, says “Congratulations! You’ve Won!!” or makes noise. There is not a single Internet user out there who associates a noisy pop-up ad with anything legitimate.

Even if your advertising doesn’t literally scream at people, you still shouldn’t have so much of it that it starts to crowd out your message. Site advertising should be secondary to content.

Your information is outdated.

Keeping your site updated with company news can help potential customers learn more about you – unless you haven’t updated your company’s news for two or three years. Along with ensuring you update site content on a regular basis, you’ll also want to test functionality of all links and site features. When you allow your site to fall out of date, it will appear as though your company has also fallen behind the times.

Need some help with your website? The Marketing Zen Group can help you with your website copy and design. Contact us today!

Photo via Flickr

Make your website mobile-friendly.

You don’t want to make a smartphone user struggle to make your site appear in the right dimensions on their screen, especially when many other sites are already optimized for mobile viewing. Effective mobile sites take into consideration the average smartphone screen size, don’t overload the user with graphics and information, and don’t require horizontal scrolling or zooming. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile viewing, the user will quickly move on – potentially to one of your competitors with a more user-friendly mobile site.

Keep it simple.

Remember that whatever you’re asking your audience to do, they will be doing on a very small screen. You want them to read a marketing pitch? Keep mobile landing pages concise. You want them to fill out a contact form? Keep the form’s length as short as possible – typing on a smartphone can be a hassle, which means your customers will easily tire of filling in the blanks. Remember: keeping your length down is no excuse for forgetting your call to action.

Make it fun.

Users need an enticing reason to participate in your mobile marketing. Get creative and make it fun for them – it’ll pay off in the long run. For example, QR codes can easily be integrated into a mobile scavenger hunt for your customers. Offer specials for people checking in to your location on Foursquare or Facebook, like a free dessert or promotional item.

Don’t make it difficult to opt out.

If you’re planning to integrate text messages into your mobile marketing plan, ensure customers are aware of how to opt out of your messaging, and that this opting out is very simple. SMS can be a useful marketing tool, especially for those cell phone users who haven’t yet upgraded to smartphones. The same rules apply here as they do for email marketing: don’t bombard your customers with too many messages, and don’t send unsolicited offers.

Consider creating an app.

Mobile applications have become the backbone of the smartphone user experience. Many major companies across a wide variety of industries – including federal student loans and Girl Scout cookies – have developed their own mobile apps, available for user download. Consider whether or not you think there would be an audience for your mobile application were you to develop one. If you think so, start talking to some mobile developers about the logistics.

Need some assistance jumpstarting your mobile marketing campaign? The experts at The Marketing Zen Group can help. Contact us today! Have any mobile marketing tips? Leave us a comment to let us know!

Photo via ivyfield on Flickr

Instagram

Even if you don’t personally use Instagram you’ve probably heard of the smartphone photo application, which Facebook recently bought for a mere $1 billion (yes, that’s “billion” with a B). The popular app was limited to the iPhone platform from its launch in late 2010 until earlier this month, when an Android version was introduced. Many brands, particularly in ecommerce and fashion, have embraced the platform as a way to visually communicate with their audiences. Remember: a picture’s worth 1000 words, which can come in handy when you’re trying to submit to Twitter’s character constraints.

PinView

You must know what Pinterest is by now – even we’ve extolled the virtues of the image-sharing site. Pinterest has quickly risen to success, and its clean and easily navigable site design has played a big hand in that.

It’s too bad your Facebook News Feed doesn’t look like this – instead, you’re stuck with endless scrolling and an overwhelming amount of information. Or what if your new Timeline profile could be organized into this format?

Well, it can. Above, you can see our CEO Shama Kabani’s last three Facebook updates arranged in a Pinterest format. If you quickly find yourself overwhelmed by the number of updates you see from your friends and subscriptions, this is a clean way to scan everything.

Kickstarter

If you have an idea for a movie, book, video game, or another creative endeavor, but you don’t have the funding — that’s where Kickstarter comes in. Their model of fundraising has been called “crowd funding” and the concept is simple: ask a lot of people for a small amount of money. If you don’t reach your set goal by a specified date, the bank accounts of those who already pledged money aren’t charged. Some Kickstarter-funded projects have gone on to be wildly successful, including the Printrbot (a 3D printer), an iPod nano wristwatch, and films that have showed at major festivals, including Sundance and South by Southwest. So if you have a big idea but not such a big reserve of cash behind it, Kickstarter could be just what you need to – well – kick-start your project.

Shoptiques

Ecommerce sites have made the latest trends available to basically anywhere the post office delivers. But certain retailers may fall behind: namely, the boutique owner. By nature, boutiques are local and often eclectic, but many haven’t adapted to online sales – which means the boutique owner misses all the potential business of the fashion-conscious shopper who lives hundreds of miles away and can’t just stop by. But with Shoptiques, your inventory is available to a whole new audience. Shoppers can browse by type of clothing, or by city and neighborhood instead.

Is there a site or app that you think has major potential? Leave us a comment to let us know!

Photo credit

“But why would I want to annoy my customers?”

Make your customers feel ignored.

Imagine the following scenario: you’ve been a business’s loyal customer for a number of years, but you recently had some pretty lousy service. You send them an email or call them up to lodge a complaint and let them know about the incident, but nobody answers the phone during business hours or your email doesn’t receive a response. Odds are, your loyalty would wane at least a little bit.

This is what happens when customers post on your Facebook wall or tweet at you, only for their words to fall on deaf ears. As of October 2011, a study found that 70 percent of companies on Twitter weren’t responding to customer complaints. Imagine if 70 percent of companies just didn’t answer the phone — ever. With more and more communication happening via social media, that’s basically what you’re doing by ignoring tweets and comments.

Respond defensively to criticism.

Remember our cautionary tale about Yelp, featuring a restauranteur from Scottsdale with…well…let’s call it a short fuse? If not, here’s our example of what not to do (just to refresh your memory):

If you’re looking for a way to alienate your customers, calling them insane is a good place to start. But most of you probably don’t want to alienate your customers, which means you don’t want to get defensive when you run into a critical viewpoint of your product or business practices. Think of it as market research – how can you adapt to consumer wants and needs?

Spam!

You may think it’ll seem like a nice gesture when a customer opens their new direct message on Twitter to find an automated “Thanks for following!” message. That’s not how it seems. How does it seem? It seems…well, like an automated message that goes out to every single one of your new followers. Your customers appreciate genuine gestures to reach out and connect with them. Mass, automated messaging defeats the purpose of social media.

“Automated direct messaging is a very, very bad idea,” says our CEO Shama Kabani. “Please stop.” There are plenty of ways to make your followers feel important. Auto DMs, however, may have them reaching for the “unfollow” button.

Auto-post your tweets to Facebook.

It’s fine to convey similar messages with your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Honestly, the messaging should be fairly consistent for the sake of your branding. However, the solution isn’t checking the box that auto posts your tweets to Facebook (also not the solution: auto-posting your Facebook activity to Twitter).

First of all, you should be making use of Twitter hashtags whenever possible. Hashtags do not translate to Facebook. You may potentially end up looking confused. Second, the two networks have different user demographics. While Twitter users are used to seeing multiple tweets per day from the same accounts, Facebook users may find that amount of information spam-like. Finally, there are those users who have both Facebook and Twitter. You want to give them a reason to pay attention to your activity on both networks – and you’re not giving them a good reason if your activity on both networks is identical.

What do you think is the biggest social media brand don’t? Leave us a comment to let us know!

Photo via Flickr

Finding Existing Interest Lists

Many Facebook users have already created Interest Lists on a wide variety of topics. You can browse through these and choose the ones you think you’d want to read. Based on your profile information and likes, you might also have some suggested lists:

If we click through to Animal Causes, we can see a list of who and what we’d be receiving updates from.

So we decide to subscribe to this list. Where does it show up in our default newsfeed view?

Your interests will be underneath your individual friend lists (you may have to click the “more” button to get to them).

Creating an Interest List

Since these lists are relatively new, some of your major interests might not have a list yet. This means that you can either wait around for someone to compile this list, or you can just make it yourself. Making an Interest List isn’t hard! Let’s walk through it.

Let’s say I want to subscribe to news about my alma mater, Ohio University.

By selecting pages related to the university, the surrounding area, and the specific school within the university that I attended (plus one Ohio University-related joke page), I can compile my very own Interest List. On the next screen, I am given the ability to name my list, as well as indicate whether it should be public, friends only, or private. And then…

Voila! A customized interest list. But wait – there’s one more important thing to show you. Say you come across a page that you’d like to add to an Interest List. How does that work?

In the dropdown menu at the top right of the new Timeline pages, there’s a new top option: Add to Interest Lists. Obviously, we’ll click that…

I can then add this page to the list I already created, or create an entirely new list. The page I happen to be on is a restaurant in the university area, so I’ve added it to my existing list.

Check your privacy settings.

In addition to adding pages to Interest Lists, you can add people – regardless of whether or not you’re friends with them. If more Facebook users begin to subscribe to your Interest List (assuming you haven’t made it private), they will be able to see the public updates of everyone you’ve added to the list. Additionally, you are not notified if someone adds you to an Interest List.

What does this mean for you? If you’re posting a lot of things publicly, your updates are now available to a much wider audience. This can be great for exposure, unless you publicly say something embarrassing. As always, think before you Facebook.

Do you plan to integrate Facebook’s new Interest Lists into your social media marketing strategy? How? Leave us a comment and let us know!

That’s easy – you just have to update it!

Our CEO Shama Kabani wrote the first edition of her bestselling book The Zen of Social Media Marketing in 2010. The book’s companion website was continually updated, but it’s 2012 now. Facebook doesn’t look like this anymore:

That (along with many other changes) is why The Zen of Social Media Marketing needed an update! So get ready, get set…

(Drumroll please)

…for the 2012 edition of The Zen of Social Media Marketing! Available in both print and Kindle editions, the updated 2012 edition has brand new content on Google+, Facebook ads, and SEO, as well as updates on developments with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And that’s not even everything!

If you’re struggling to understand the components of a successful social media marketing strategy, we suggest picking up a copy of our resident zen master’s book. After reading it, let us know if you still have any questions about Circles and Timelines and SEO – our experts are here for a reason!