“There is a Japanese proverb that says: ‘Raise the sail with your stronger hand’. Meaning you must go after the opportunities that arise in life that you are best equipped to do”.

Soichiro Honda (founder of Honda)

Newsflash!

Effectively immediately I have joined a team of four developers, one designer, one trainee and one CEO/Founder in their mission to help small and medium sized e-commerce stores eliminate bad customer service. I have joined SaaS startup ROBIN – the intelligent Customer Service Assistant.

As ROBIN’s ‘Marketing Manager Content Marketing & Online PR’ I will (and I quote from the job description) ‘develop and execute a creative startup marketing strategy, editorial calendar and standards that deliver business results like share-of-voice, ecommerce customer service evangelism, branding & the most important thing: signups within the ecosystems of our partners.’

Why leave Storywise?

Over the past four years I successfully set-up, developed and managed Storywise, my own communication consultancy, together with my co-founder Steve Seager. Throughout this time we helped our clients answer the burning question: ‘What content should I publish to reach my business goals?’. And by content I mean the actual ‘contents’ of their marketing communications – the messaging; the thing you plan to say.

Thanks to Steve’s shit-hot strategic communications process we developed Editorial and Content Marketing strategies for clients in B2B and B2C, across ICT, Professional Services, Culture, Media and Not-for-profit. I’m happy to say Storywise’s client list is still growing.

I feel extremely privileged that I went through this process myself for various clients – and received such great coaching from Steve along the way. I could have never become the content marketer I am today without that experience.

However, even though working for clients can be fun, I most often felt like an outsider offering partial business solutions. I missed the ‘through-the-line’ involvement and relationships that come with working within a dedicated team. I missed having ownership of a single product or brand. I missed doing what I am best equipped to do: being a marketer.

Why join ROBIN?

At ROBIN I’m getting all the marketing opportunities I could wish for. First of all, ROBIN is a great product that solves a real problem for web store owners. ROBIN aggregates all the customer service client conversations – from e.g. email, web form, phone & Twitter – and consolidates these conversations in one smart and easy-to-use interface.

ROBIN also integrates seamlessly with major e-Commerce platforms such as SEOshop, Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce and others. This saves the customer service team loads of time and allows them to help their client better.

And to top things off, ROBIN learns from every question asked and every answer given. So the more you use ROBIN the smarter it gets. Pretty neat and a great USP!

But my main reason for joining ROBIN is my instant click with the people. They have a great team consistently focussed on getting it right. From the start ROBIN developed a clear strategy to match their solution to their target audience needs. This is the best foundation for content marketing I could possibly wish for!

Blogging & more blogging

I will continue blogging here on my personal blog about content marketing strategy, social media marketing and other Marketing 2.0 related topics. As ever: in plain English!

In addition, you will also see blog posts from me on the ROBIN blog which will be more oriented on e-Commerce, Customer Service and other topics that are of value to ROBIN clients, prospects & stakeholders.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

To close this blog post off, I would like to thank our Storywise clients for their trust and appreciation of our work.

Also, a huge thanks to my family for their patience, trust and undying support.

And last but not least, a massive thanks to Steve. It’s been a great ride and my life will never be the same. In a couple of years, I will be able to say that I worked closely with the guy who did to communications what Quentin Tarantino did to film. I am proud to have worked with you and am grateful to be your friend.

PS

That little ‘Contact Us’ button on the right side of this blog? That’s ROBIN! Feel free to drop me a line. I’ll get back to very quickly, definitely within’ 24 hours. Promise!

Back in 2010 I did a post called ‘Shameless Blog Promotion’. I always send it on to clients to help them get going with promoting their posts. But it’s 2013 now. Some things have changed. So, time for an update!

I have condensed this rather lengthy post down into a 9 point action list for you to take away. Below the image you’ll find much more details.

Optimise: SEO checklist

The process of promoting your blog post starts before you publish it. Knowing your target audience, gaining insights into their needs and writing unique content that add value to them is the very essence of blogging.

But there are also some tactical thingies you need to get right so your blog posts are found in search engines. Here are some helpful tips to help you optimise your blog posts for Google:

Copywriting SEO tips to help you get your blog posts found better (part I)
Copywriting SEO tips to help you get your blog posts found even better (part II)

So now that you’ve published your optimised blog post, and it can be found in search engines, you can now start with your shameless blog promotion ritual.

Syndicate across your company outposts

Your post is on the company blog, so you can now share it across your company’s outposts across the social web. Needless to say you can have many, but be sure to cover your:

• Facebook page
• LinkedIn Company Update (with a targeted update to your followers)
• Twitter channel (using the right hashtags!)
• Google+ company page (adding an insight or summary)
• Pinterest channel (because of course you’ve used an amazing picture, right?)

But what exactly IS great content?

When you now go online and search for ‘what is great content’, you will not find an all-encompassing definition of what makes content great. And that is perhaps logical. Because as always… ‘it depends’. Also, content is great, when someone thinks it is great. Just like with music. Or film.

Still, some music is loved by many and some stays undiscovered. Some pieces of content get found and shared like wild fire and some die-off the moment you publish them. So, what is the secret? What happens if you dissect a great piece content? What do you find? What are the fundamental elements that great content is build on?

Just yesterday, Steve Seager published a model called The Anatomy of Great Content. The model is intended as a discussion piece for B2B marketers and strategic communicators to help improve the quality of future content.

I think it’s especially great to use as a sanity-check against your existing content!

I want to zoom in a bit on the first 3 elements: targeted, valuable & structured. In my experience, this is where marketers struggle most to get it right (‘great’ that is!). These elements are all about ‘messaging’. About what you actually plan to say.

1. Targeted

The web is about reaching people directly. One on one. You always have a real person sitting on the other end of the screen. So, you need to write your content for individuals not markets or segments.

Take a look at some of your existing content and ask yourself: WHO is this written for?

2. Valuable

The web has gone social for a good while now. It’s not about Quid Pro Quo any more. Instead you gotta give to get!. Figure out exactly what your target audience really needs and where you can help. Do research, look at your data, talk to your sales people and get the facts. It’s about their needs!

Take a look at some of your existing content and ask yourself: WHAT is the real value of this piece of content to the person I am targeting?

3. Structured

Everything you do as a publisher on the social web, starts with the question ‘what do I want to achieve?’. Then you ask ‘with who’ (targeted!) and ‘how’ (offer value!). Then you need to factor in who is saying it (your positioning) and what you are selling (specific aspects of your value proposition).

If you want to tie all that up in a great piece of content, and keep doing that, you need structure. Just like with music. Or film. A great film usually has a great story (that’s you!), great actors (that’s your staff, clients, prospects & stakeholders), great plot points (that’s the themes and topics you are talking about) and great dialogue (that’s you engaging in a conversation with your target audiences).

The combination of all that is what makes you love a film. What makes you remember it. And tell your friends about.

So as a last, but vital, sanity check against your content:

Take a look at some of your existing content and ask yourself: does it stick?

As for the other 4 elements in the model: atomised, optimised, activating & measurable… don’t bother with those until you get your messaging right! Because you hardly ever see a great film that solely relies on great photography, camerawork and special effects. Now do you?

More context and additional information download the E-book below:

DOWNLOAD THE PDF: The Anatomy of Great Content: a content marketing model for B2B marketers and strategic communicators.

There is no substitute for caring for your audience, your customer and your clients. And… you need to have an actual business model to support and sustain it.

This really is the secret of successful marketing on the social web.

If you care for your customers, offer them great products and services, exceptional customer service and an overall satisfying experience – you create a happy customer. And happy customers create more customers.

Below is the video with Gary’s interview where he said what I just said he said

I’ve placed this clip on my blog before, and back then I received comments from people who said that they had a hard time making out exactly what Gary had to say.

That’s partly because the interview (by Monty Metzger) was conducted on a really busy street, and partly because Gary sounds like Joe Pesci on a marketing mission.

Since I placed this clip on my blog before, I felt obliged to add a little extra value. So you can download a PDF with an English transcript of the video, below; just in case you are having a hard time hearing exactly what Gary had to say. I had great fun puzzling it together.

Download video transcript: Gary Vaynerchuk on the secret of his success [PDF]

It’s a word I hear a lot. I even use it myself sometimes:

Leverage.

I like the word.

“Leverage”

Sounds and smells fluid & rubbery. But it actually means to do the opposite. It takes power and muscle to leverage one thing towards the other.

I sometimes hear people say that they want to: “Leverage the power of social media”.

Is that possible?

Well, yes it is.

But certainly not with a Quid Pro Quo attitude. I recommend trying a warm and heartfelt “Are you being served?” instead.

Trust, Relationships, and happy clients: that’s the real stuff you can leverage in social media.

I did do a fair bit of looking into my Google Analytics stats and so on, but it’s not scientific. Just as much came from my meetings with clients and our work over the past few months.

So! Here’s what I uncovered about who you are, and what you care most about. I’d love to hear what you think about this too! Do you recognise yourself here?

You are:

A business leader

You’re maybe not a marketer by profession, but you are the owner of your business – an entrepreneur – or head of a division. You know something has changed. You know that the social web has clear possibilities. But you’re not fully up to speed with the business value of ‘social media’, ‘inbound’ or ‘content marketing’ – yet!

Through my blog posts, I will help explain the bigger picture. Help you to direct conversations in your company. Explain how and why the social web impacts your industry, your business and – your bottom line.

A marketing director or manager

As a marketing director or manager, you experience every day that the social web has completely changed the face of marketing. Your team is working on campaigns and focusing on social channels & networks. Still, you are seeing a gap between what you expect and the actual results.

On my blog I’ll help you join stuff up with good strategy. Start getting tactics working better together, so you can focus on tying up your marketing to specific business outcomes. (By the way, joining up campaigns to programs is a great way to start!)

A marketer or communicator

You are on the sharp end of it all. You already develop and implement social campaigns, develop content, manage questions on channels, solve problems every single day. You’re expected to be the one who has an answer to everyone’s ‘social media’ questions!

In my blog you’ll find quite a few tactical posts on SEO, social channels, content marketing along with tons of ‘How to’ and ‘What is’ posts on optimisation, measurement, blogging. And more. To be frank, these are often my favourites posts to write. So I’ll keep doing them!

Are you missing?

I’ve reorganised my content to make it easier to find what you need. But If I’m missing you out here, if I’m not giving you what you need … mail me! I’d love to know that you are being served.

But organising a great event – with mutual value for everyone involved – is not easy. Quite often basic principles are overlooked.

Here’s a practical little checklist to make sure that the event you organise is worth the effort of organising and attending it!

1. Make sure your presentations connect to the target audience needs

My first advice is to make your event as targeted as possible. If you are targeting MDs or CEOs, talk about your vision on the industry or new strategic opportunities for their business. But if you are inviting medium level executives, make sure your presentations help them with the problems they are facing every day.

2. Live up to the expectation

Don’t make big claims that you can’t deliver on. Quite often events are advertised with slogans such as ‘The secret of success in social media’ or ‘How to make your online strategy work’. When you make claims like that, make sure you deliver on them. If you don’t, no matter how well the event was organised, your audience will end up being disappointed.

3. Have your attendees promote the event for you through social media

Once you have established a list of attendees, make sure they can promote the event for you. Publish teaser content on your blog or in social media channels such as YouTube or Slideshare. Connect with your attendees on Twitter and Linkedin. Ask them to share the content with their network. And oh yes, make sure the content is valuable, not just marketing blurb!

4. Keep on publishing throughout the event

Also during the event, allow attendees to send updates and photos to their followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook. Make sure you give them the hashtag you have claimed for your event on forehand. And of course, make sure they have access to high speed internet throughout the entire event.

5. Take good aftercare

Now that you have your audience engaged, make sure you leverage that. Publish a presentation or a video with the biggest insights of the event. Reconnect with your attendees in social media. Invite them to share. Ask them what they thought of the event to make your next event even better.

So, in a nutshell:

Publish valuable content, connect with your audience in social media and engage them in a conversation.

Happy organising!

As a result, most companies enter into social media for all the wrong reasons. They see social media channels, such as Facebook & Twitter, as a great opportunity to get their ad or site in front of as many people as possible.

But is that really the big opportunity of social media?

Well, not really. Marketing in social media takes a headflip. You need to start thinking inbound as opposed to outbound, permission as opposed to interruption and targeted as opposed to mass.

So, most often the problem lies in your intent.

Ask yourself again why do you want to be in social media?

Hint: the biggest opportunity social media offers is to better help, understand and serve your customers.

The biggest threat?

If you don’t, someone else will!

Despite my years as brand director for Commodore International Corp. I’m not a mobile specialist. So I was there to help us explore how businesses could fit mobile into their overall marketing 2.0 strategy.

The panel discussion was preceded by two presentations. The first was from Sander Munsterman from xs2theworld – who have developed mobile solutions for global brand such as Porsche, IBM, Fanta, Pfizer, Kodak, BBC and Orange. The second was from Edward Hölsken from mediaBunker – who have developed custom apps for everyone from Playboy and Peugot to Sinterklaas!

So let’s see – should you develop an app for your business?

1. Mobile Strategy starts with goal setting

Developing an app because it makes your company look cool and innovative towards stakeholders is OK. If that’s your PR goal. But there’s other ways of looking cool & innovative without going to the expense and trouble of developing a mobile app.

Spending more time on figuring out why you want to do a mobile app, and defining what specifically you want to achieve, will save you the disappointment of developing an app that is not being downloaded or used. It’s a very competitive market. And the app failure rate is high! Here’s a useful little post from my faithful strategy partner on goal setting.

2. Mobile is just another tool or channel; so focus on content

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying mobile is not important. It is. Somewhere next year, mobile will overtake use of the PC. A good reason to be prepared. But ultimately, it’s just another channel – like Facebook, your website, blog or Twitter – that we can use to deliver content to your target audience.

You need to think of Mobile as an integral part of your entire strategic eco-system. The only element that ties together your entire eco-system is content. So, it’s better to first start considering what content you need to offer, what content users create themselves and how you organise the content. This can now inform your mobile strategy.

3. Mobile is not just about campaigns

A large chunk of the apps out there are created for campaign purposes. Their downloads are driven by promotion and advertising with the objective to have customers ‘engage’ with brands through competitions, fun or games and create awareness or sales. But apps can have both a longer shelf-life, more value and a more strategic business focus as well.

A great example is the Sennheiser Frequency Finder. In short: Sennheiser had a problem with one of their flagship products: the wireless microphone. Sound engineers had a tough time getting them to work in venues without interference of other frequencies. This started impacting their customer satisfaction and Trust.

The Sennheiser iPhone app helps sound engineers find and set the right frequency for any given venue. This allows the product to perform much better. Which increases customer satisfaction and Trust. This will create positive word of mouth and increase sales over time. A great example of strategic use of mobile apps!

Mobile apps – look before you leap!

Many business often jump into developing an app without first figuring out their strategy. This often brings problems in the actual development stage. Or sometimes, even earlier.

I talked with a few nice people who advise businesses on the potential and development of apps. Their starting point is always how mobile fits into your business strategy.

One of the app people told me that they have even advised clients not to develop an app – but instead focus on building a properly optimised mobile website.

This is great advice.

I think the biggest learning from this event is this:

Make sure you take the time to develop a mobile strategy that: fits your business strategy, is built around a specific need of your customers and you have the content to sustain its shelf life.

From a personal point of view I want to add one last thing – apps are cool! Once you have a good strategy, focus on the creative side. Create something that your clients would absolutely love to have. Something that really blows their skirt up. Get creative. Care to the max!

If you do all of that, you really are getting this whole 2.0 thing. Have fun!

Now, six months later, Google is taking rapid steps to further integrate Google + into the heart of the Google ecosystem: its’ search engine.

As of today, G+ users can choose to blend G+ results in with the normal Google search results. This means that content shared in G+ makes it straight to the first page of Google.

You can read more about it in this article in Mashable.

But, how will this impact your business now and in the future?

One small step

Is this new development in social search a big game changer for marketers? Not yet I think.

Currently, G+ has only got 40 million users compared to Facebooks’ near billion. So, the value of G+ search results is relative because most of your real friends are on Facebook.

However, the integration with G+ is not something they can easily undo. Google put their money on this move. The mammoth tanker has set sail, so to speak.

One giant leap

Google has now worked up everyone’s appetite for a more social search. So, Google cannot afford to offer anything less than a great user experience.

This means that Google simply has to build G+ into a major social destination, so they can really start enriching their search results with relevant social content.

The price of failing is writing a check to Facebook and Twitter to get the shared goodies from them.

In either case: search is getting more and more social. But, what is the bigger picture for businesses?

Meanwhile on the moon

I think it is safe to say that it will get increasingly impossible to get your content found in search engines if no-one likes, shares, plusses, tweets or in other ways gives it social kudos.

Google wants to dish up Quality content in search results. The rational is that content that gets shared a lot must be of better quality than content that is not.

In addition, Google is also putting much more effort in trying to establish if the content comes from a Trusted resource.

When you add it all up, marketing success on the social web is not anymore a matter of great SEO. Or social media marketing. Or content marketing. Or PR 2.0.

Instead you need to look at all of them in a joined up way.

Famous last words

I speak with people about ‘social web marketing’ every day. Most people think tactical. About traffic, networks, widgets, and tools.

But as a business:

• It’s the content you need to focus on
• And you can’t do it without strategy.

My advice:

If you ever go out and buy strategy from an agency or consultant, ask for a strategy that makes content work towards specific business objectives, by knowing exactly what to say, to who, when they need it.

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it

I recently scored my first SERP 1 in Google on a very competitive keyword. Yaay! I thought it was a good idea to take this blog post and use it as an example to educate and inspire you – so you can start writing your own chart topping blog posts.

The post I am referring to is this one; ‘Content Curation and how it can be helpful to you and your network’. It currently ranks number 1 in many local Google search engines.

So how did little old me get to the top spot on Google, while there are other, more influential people than me, also talking about this topic?

Also, most of the information in this blog post was already available on the web in one form or another. Still the post went to number one. Why?

Nutshell answer:

1. It’s targeted
2. It’s well written & structured
3. It’s well optimised.

Here are some straight-talking SEO & copywriting tips if you also want to start writing blog posts that reach the top position on Google.

1. Start with research

On my blog I started to use the term ‘Content curation’ quite a lot and I wanted to link to a post inside my own blog explaining to people what is was.

I then checked if there was any demand for such a post. So, I used the Google Keyword Tool to check volume on the term ‘Content curation’ and the keyword phrase ‘What is content curation’. As it turned out, quite a few people were searching on these terms.

I then proceeded to compile all the relevant information about content curation from the web, and I put it all in one document. I then asked myself the question what information is relevant to my target audience to answer the specific questions they have about this topic?

2. Think about your audience

On my blog I write mostly for marketers and SME business management. They visit my blog because they want to know what content marketing, SEO and social media marketing can do for their business.

Because content curation is often (wrongfully) seen as a substitute for content creation – I’ve put the distinction between the two all the way up in the blog post, right after the definition.

In addition I added some examples to make the topic more tangible, as well as adding best practices and tips to get started today.

All these elements in the copy connect directly to my target audience, their knowledge level and their informational needs.

3. Write well, structure well

Take a look at the post (link above in this post) and see how it was written. Look at how the content was structured.

All along I kept my target audience in mind. I used clear language, clean grammar and concise formulation to draw people through the text. Short sentences wherever possible. And a nice, logical flow.

Also note that I have italicised certain words. In contrast to what many SEO people would tell you, I didn’t do this to boost the importance of the italicised keywords for ranking purposes. If that was the case I would have only italicised the words ‘Content curation’ and ‘What is content curation’. Instead I have used italicising to create emphasis in the text. This helps for more easy reading and helps Google to understand the framework of the blog post.

All in all, the average reading time for this post is nearly five minutes, so most people have actually read the whole thing. Solid structure really helps.

4. You’re online … DO optimise!

Great writing and structuring is the foundation of a well optimised post. But, if you want to get found, don’t forget other so called On-Page SEO factors.

For example, you need to use the most important keywords (in this case ‘Content curation’) throughout your post (not too much!) but also in the beginning of the Title Tag of the post.

You also need to look carefully at the links you put in your post. Make sure they are relevant and provide the reader additional information or context on the topic.

There’s a lot more you can do to optimise your post. But above else, you need to provide readers and search engines with a great piece of content.

Two posts that can help you write SERP 1 blog posts

The posts below give you tips on how to start writing SERP 1 blog posts as well. They contain all the guidelines I talked about in this post and more. It’s the exact same steps I have used to write my own SERP 1 blog post.

Copywriting & SEO: 6 tips to help your blog posts get found more

SEO & Copywriting – Part II – 6 tips to get your blog posts found even better

Let me know how you get on. I would love to hear if these tips helped you to write a blog posts sitting at SERP 1!

Just in case you don’t: a hashtag is a word with a # symbol in front of it and it’s used to categorise and group conversations that are happening on micro blogging services such as Twitter.

Using hashtags can help your tweet get more attention, retweets and clicks and even help you build followers.

But there is a problem.

According to this research from social media management software provider Argyle Social many marketing professionals use hashtags ineffectively.

In the research they analysed more than 37,000 total tweets from 103 Twitter business accounts. They found out that some companies got much more clicks from their tweets containing hashtags than others.

Using hashtags: what doesn’t work?

Hashtags do not work when the words you use are too generic. Too broad. For example, the research shows that hashtags like #socialmedia, #business, #sales or #crm are too generic. People are not following these because there is too much ‘noise’ to filter out.

The same goes for hashtags like #superbowl or hashtags from large conferences like #adtech or #sxsw, because these hashtags fly by quicker than anyone can read.

Using hashtags: what does work?

Hashtags need to be relevant, targeted and occur naturally in the conversation. Think for instance of:

• Moderately sized conferences and lectures: e.g. #iabceme, #MP2011
• Causes: e.g. #haiti, #giveasmile
• Highly engaged groups: e.g. #crisiscompit, #glutenfree, #oilspill
• Create your own: e.g. #nerdbird, #blogchat

Key insight for marketers, PRs and business communicators when using hashtags

On the social web you need to get much more targeted than you were used to in mass communications. It’s not about reaching many people. It’s about reaching the people who really want to hear what you have to say and will share it with their peers.

To do that you have to think specifically about what exactly people are interested in. What are the most relevant hashtags about the topic you have to offer. Then create the right hashtag or combinations of hashtags, that will get the right message to the right audience.

Happy #hashtagging!

This happens a lot, because many business people think SEO is scary and difficult. But it ain’t. In my view it’s actually a core business skill. Also, basic SEO for WordPress is not too difficult to implement.

Here are 5 quick SEO wins you can implement today through your WordPress CMS:

1. Optimise your homepage title

– Go to: Settings > General
– Here you see ‘Site Title’ and underneath that ‘Tagline’
– My ‘Site Title’ is ‘Social media tactics you can Trust’
– My ‘Tagline’ is ‘PR 2.0  | Social Media Marketing | SEO | Content Marketing’.

This is how my site appears in Google:

As you can see, Google shows the ‘Site Title’ + the ‘Tagline’ all the way at the top of the search result. In SEO terms this is called the Title Tag. If there is one (On-Page SEO) ranking factor you cannot ignore it’s the title tag. Google uses the words you put in your site title tag to figure out what your site is about.

2. Optimise your homepage meta description

The meta description is the description of your site that Google shows in search results. The meta description serves mostly as a call to action for people to visit your site. Take a look at the image above. My meta description is:

“Great tips, tricks, insights and practical advice on how to develop the skills and knowledge to be a successful marketer on the social web.”

Funnily enough WordPress doesn’t have an easy way to fill in your home page meta description. But when you download and install the All In One SEO pack, you can easily fill in your home page meta description.

When you run a Thesis theme, like I do, you can fill in your homepage meta description under Thesis > Site Options > Home Page SEO.

3. Optimise your URLs

If your URLs look something like this: http://www.yourwebsite.com/?p=123, then you ain’t optimised.

Here’s how you change the structure of your URLs in your WordPress CMS:

– Go to Settings > Permalinks
– Select ‘Custom Structure’
– Fill in: ‘/%postname%/’ (without the kommas)
– Hit ‘Save changes’.

Your URLs now look something like this: http://www.yourwebsite.com/name-of-page-or-post. Your URLs are now optimised for search engines.

Important note: if your website already has links from other websites, you then need to redirect these links from old URL to new URL. This also goes for the internal links inside your website of course.

More on this so called 301 redirect here.

4. Optimise your blog posts and pages

With every blog post or page that you publish, make sure you use the keywords you want to be found on in:

– Title Tag (max 70 characters)
– Meta description (max 150 characters)
– URL (max 115 characters)

Some WordPress themes make it easy for you to fill in title tag and meta description per blog post or page. But some don’t. In those cases, use the All in One SEO Pack plugin and you are all sorted.

As for the URL, WordPress automatically works the title of your blog post into your URL. If it’s too long, edit it down using the ‘edit’ button right underneath your title.

5. Optimise your images

The images you use in your blog, also get indexed by Google. Optimising your images helps to get your blog content found better.

Here’s what you do:

– Go to your media library
– Select an image by clicking ‘edit’
– You need to put keywords (max 5-7) in both fields ‘Title’ as well as ‘Alternative Text’
– When you are uploading new images, also make sure you use these keywords in the file name also.

A last note

The above 5 basic SEO tips are tactics. And as we know – tactics ain’t worth much without good strategy.

As for SEO, this means that you need to use the right keywords. You do this through developing a keyword strategy.

But for now, these basic SEO tactics should already help to optimise your WordPress blog better for search engines!

Google Suggest is a really handy tool to get a grip on long tail searches and it is also a source of inspiration for blog topics. And that’s why I am now writing this post for  ‘social media marketing for dummies’.

7 Things Social Media Marketing Dummies need to know about Social Media Marketing

1. You’re not dumb!

That’s right. You are not dumb. It’s mostly about unlearning rather than learning. You need to unlearn many things that you’ve become used to as a marketer. For instance …

You cannot interrupt people. They need to proactively ‘like’ you or follow you. You cannot broadcast. You need to engage in a conversation. You cannot only talk about yourself. It’s all about them.

Phew! Sounds like you are marketing with two hands behind your back. But it’s not that bad. You just need a head flip. You need to start thinking differently.

2. Know what you want to achieve

Bottom line, marketing is about selling stuff. So, sales and higher conversions are good goals to set. But the social web is a big place. Customers and prospects might want to get to know you better. Especially in B2B marketing. Trust is a big thing.

So, if you are an expert in your field, it can be a great strategy to start working on your thought leadership and build infuence in your industry.

For B2C marketers, building customer satisfaction can be a great goal for social media marketing. Think about the Zappos case for instance. But you can also focus on managing online reputation. This is how Dell got into social media.

3. Discover what you have to give

It’s not called the ‘social’ web for nothing. Social doesn’t just mean ‘hanging out’ and letting your followers know what you had for lunch. It means actually being social and doing something of value for people.

Think of these friendly IT people who give you an answer when you post a question in a forum. They do this because they know something that you don’t, and they like to help.

If you adapt that kind of headset towards your clients or prospects, you’ll soon find out that you have loads to give. It’s about giving something of real value – without demanding anything in return!

4. Say it with content!

Once you have figured out what you are going to give, you need to realise that they way you are delivering this value is through content. It’s all about the content.

Content is the currency of the social web. It’s what makes people click, follow, subscribe, like, share, donate and buy! It builds Influence, Loyalty and Trust with your customers, prospects and other stakeholders. And it drives people through their decision making process about you and your products or services.

Whether it’s a white book you publish, a video you put on YouTube, a status update on Linkedin, a blog post on your blog, a tweet you send on Twitter….as a marketer you need to learn how to become a publisher of valuable content.

5. Think targeted – no, more targeted than that

What is of value to the one person, is not of value to the other. That’s a major challenge for social media marketers! You are not targeting market segments based on demographics. Instead you are targeting real people with real individual needs.

This means, you are not targeting males, in their forties with above avarage education and salary. Instead you can be targeting for instance ‘HR managers in health care who want to improve the regional mobility of their workforce’. And instead of targeting women, between 20 and 35 with a higher education, you are now targeting ‘pregnant moms in Amsterdam with an iPhone’.

You will find yourself targeting people much less based on their demographics and much more based on their behaviours!

6. Think more about their needs than your ‘benefits’

So, you need to offer something of real value, you do that by publishing useful content and you are targeting that content towards individuals.

As a marketer, you used to create one marketing message based on your product benefits and broadcast that message on TV, radio or print. This is how you used to find customers. But on the social web, your customers find you! (This is called inbound marketing).

Where you used to use a fishnet and drag everything in that moved, you are now using a hook and some bait. The bait is the solution to the individual need of your potential customer. This is how you get found in Google and in social networks. People don’t search for ‘cleans cleaner than ever’. They search for ‘what kills germs’. Catch my drift?

7. Don’t go in without a strategy

Many businesses try out social media marketing by starting a Twitter profile or a Facebook page. Or a blog even. In 99.9% of the cases, these initiatives fall dry. And always for the same reasons: either you run out of things to say or it’s not getting you any results. Actually, the reason you don’t get any results is because you run out of things to say!

So before you start, make sure you set clear goals. Then develop a strategy. A strategy ties up an action to a specific target group (or persona) and a specific business objective to specific content.

So, you could for instance ‘publish a white book, targeted at industry influential to build thought leadership’. Or ‘publish a series of video tutorials for your customers to raise customer satisfaction and reduce call centre traffic’.

Bottom line: don’t go in without a strategy. If you find it hard to come up with a strategy: get help.

A last note:

Social media marketing ain’t terribly difficult, but it is quite different compared to how you used to market your products and services.

If your company doesn’t have a presence on the social web yet: you are late! But don’t dive in head first without a plan. To help you kick-start the process, here’s:

7 Tactics for SME business leaders to kick start social media today.

Thanks for reading this post all the way through to the end.

You have now officially left the club of social media marketing dummies!

This Friday and Saturday I’ve been invited to be part of the Design Award Jury for the Hall 1 exhibits for the 2011 annual International Broadcasting Convention at the RAI Amsterdam. Together, we will be looking for the exhibits with a strong, stylish and confident visual presence that makes for an accomplished and differentiated brand.

The IBC expects around 48,000 attendees from more than 140 countries and includes major industry speakers such as filmmaker James Cameron, Virgin Media COO Andrew Barron, Christian Hernandez, head of international business development EMEA Facebook through to pretty much everyone who is anyone in the global media and broadcast industry.

To get in the mood, I decided to check out more than 100 websites of the Hall 1 exhibitors. As marketing director of our strategy and communications 2.0 company I couldn’t resist doing a quick analysis of how these companies represent themselves online. Here’s what I found:

1. The ‘Industry leader’ exhibitors- 15%

I would only classify about 15% of the sites I visited as ‘very good.’ These are companies that position themselves well as industry leaders. They clearly talk about the real business value of their products and services. They have well designed websites with good architecture, they speak in clear language, free of gobbledygook. And most of the time they are optimised to a keyword strategy.

Quick tips: Hardly any of these sites had a blog, newsroom, live Twitterfeed or social sharing. If they did, they could, for instance, speak about the state of the industry, their ambitions, their people or their processes. That’s a missed opportunity to translate market leadership into thought leadership. Plus, the lack of a newsroom or social media presence means that they can’t get the most out of the conference by posting live news there and get it shared by others. That’s a shame!

2. The ‘Product’ exhibitors- 45%

Around 45% of the websites I saw were heavily branded as ‘product suppliers’. They centralize the product and the technical specifications. They speak in technical language, don’t talk about the business value of their products and services, and less than 20% of these were optimised to a keyword strategy.

Quick tips: Unless people already know you and are searching for your product, it’s very unlikely that these type of sites will ever be found. Virtually no-one was optimised to a keyword strategy. By focusing more on the positioning of the company itself – and talking about the business value of their products, these companies could start to compete on a more level playing field with the ‘Industry Leaders’. And I’m sure many of them are totally capable of it!

3. The ‘Corporate’ exhibitors – 35%

These websites had a strong emphasis on press, events, investor relations, board names, company structure, etc. Their online representation and communications is mostly targeted at their direct stakeholders. Their investors, suppliers and existing client relationships. Products were often as sub navigation. Many of these ‘corporates’ appeared to be distributors.

Quick tips: These companies need to be careful not to use too much gobbledygook. The fact that you say that your solutions are cutting edge, mission critical, world class and groundbreaking doesn’t mean that people believe that. In fact, most of the time they won’t. And they don’t differentiate you from the competition at all. I would advocate normal language. Oh, and also here… less than 20% of these sites were optimised to a keyword strategy.

4: The Ambitious and Web 2.0 savvy exhibitors – 5%

These are the kind of companies that clearly see the importance of good online representation. They were often small, but obviously ambitious and web 2.0 savvy. They were very well positioned – often towards specific personas. Their value proposition was crystal clear – in as few words as possible.

They also use rich media such as animated video and designed PDFs as takeaways. They all had share widgets on them too. They speak about who they are, introduce the people in the company, including a picture and are often clearly visible in social media.

Not surprisingly, most of them where also optimised to a keyword strategy for both the company and their products and services. Meaning – that whether you searched for an employee, the company or a product and service, you would find them.

Quick tips: Keep on doing what you are doing!

Conclusion

Many of the companies exhibiting at IBC obviously spend money on trade shows. Logical. This is where your market is. There’s great exposure. Here you meet your buyers. Industry influentials. Collegues and other stakeholders. Nothing beats a face to face conversation.

But the other 363 days of the year, people are going to check out your website to find out more about you … just like I did!

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to the tour of Hall 1 and see how the IBC exhibitors brand themselves in the flesh, so to speak. I’ll let you know more as soon as I do!

PS – Thanks to Andi for the nomination.

It sums up the way many businesses and organisations approach social media marketing – as just another thing to build. Without thinking about content – the currency of the social web.

Figuring out what to say starts with developing strategy for the social web.

Only when you have your overall strategy nice and clear can you figure out your content strategy – the stuff you need to publish. For example …

Publishing a series of e-books with great insights into your industry may get you thought leadership.

Publishing well optimised, valuable, targeted whitepapers about your products and services may drive leads and conversions.

But publishing that you are stuck in a traffic jam or what you had for breakfast will only get you, erm, nothing.

So … what are you going to say? Do you know yet? Have you set your strategy?

This is the traditional way of growing a user base. First pioneers and innovators, then early majority, late majorty and finally laggards. This is how Facebook grew for instance.

Google Plus has the opportunity to do this differently. They need to deploy the pincer movement. The pincer movement is a military maneuver, where both flanks of the opponent are simultaneously attacked.

Google can use this strategy by focussing on both pioneers and laggards!

Google Plus: the innovators’ favourite

Innovators love G+ because of it’s rich functionality and especially because of the ‘Circles’ functionality. By adding people to a circle, you can share stuff only with the people in that circle.

As a heavy social media user, I really like this functionality because it makes it easier to share relevant content with the right people.

But ‘Circles’ also makes G+ a very suitable social network for laggards.

Why Google Plus is a great introduction into social media for laggards

I know many people in my personal life who are not in social media. They just don’t have the need to connect with people from their past such as former colleagues, friends from school or even with family members or acquintances.

But they DO like to share. My brother in law for instance frequently sends me an email with a YouTube clip or article he wants to share with me.

He is now on G+. We have a circle together. Just me and him. And we share more than ever.

He told me that he will set up another circle with his brother and with his best friend.

My brother in law is not on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or Linkedin. Nor will he ever be. But he is on G+.

Who’s the opponent?

Facebook of course. I don’t really believe that G+ is going to kill Facebook. But I don’t think it has to. What G+ needs to do, is get users to use Facebook AS WELL AS Google Plus.

My brother in laws’ brother and best friend were already on Facebook. They are now also on G+. Because of him.

His brother and best friend were respectively early- and late majority. So, the laggard has pulled the early- and late majority into G+.

If I was Google I would start leveraging this opportunity.

In 216 BC Hannibal used this maneuver in the battle of Cannae. It’s viewed by military historians as one of the greatest battlefield maneuvers in history.

Just the thing Google needs to start drawing people from Facebook into G+.

As it turns out, Linkedin has sneakily changed it’s members account settings, so that their name and face can be used in advertsing messages on the Linkedin platform.

Ehrm… What?!

That right. You are automatically opt-ed IN for social advertising. Unasked. Unwanted. Unpaid.

I am not 100% surprised though, because Linkedin has a habbit of deploying socially unethical marketing techniques.

Anyway, let’s not rant too much and just help you out with telling you how to shut it off:

How to opt-out of Linkedin social advertising program

1. Login to Linkedin
2. Move your mouse over your name, fold-out menu appears: choose ‘Settings’
3. Choose ‘Account’ (bottom left)
4. Under ‘Privacy controls’, select ‘Manage Social Advertising’
5. Uncheck box ‘LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising’
6. Click ‘Save’
7. You now receive a notification ‘You have successfully updated your social advertising settings’.

PS

Dear Linkedin, it is soooo not worth screwing over your own clients over this. All the major Dutch press outlets have picked up on this story (e.g. here, here and here). Not so good for your online reputation.

In the comment section of my post some people were kind enough to point out some alternate ways of importing your Facebook photos into Google Plus.

You can for instance use Photograbber, which also allows you to download your friends photos or any other photos that have you tagged for instance.

An interesting comment came from Christopher Russell who wrote a post about importing your Facebook photos into G+ using a recently released Chrome browser app.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Open your Chrome browser (if you don’t use Chrome yet, I highly recommend it!! – you can download Chrome here)
2. Login to Gmail
3. Go to the ‘Move your Photo app’ in the Google Chrome web store
4. Click ‘Install’
5. Seconds later you get an ‘Installed’ notification
6. Click the ‘Move Your Photos’ icon in the upper right corner of the Chrome browser
7. It then shows the ‘Login to Facebook’ button, click it
8. The app then requests access to Facebook, click ‘Allow’
9. Next up this app shows you a browser screen with all your pictures in it
10. All the way at the bottom of the page, click the ‘Upload’ button
11. Once you click it, you’ll see that it starts uploading
12. Notification ‘Finished uploading all your photos’
13. Go to Google Plus, click Photos & voila. All your FB pictures are imported.

Works like a charm!

Thanks for the tip Christopher. Great to know that you can now automatically import your Facebook photos into G+.

Right now I’m in the middle of doing a full analysis of traffic and engagement per blog post. I will share this data with you soon.

As I was going over all my old posts, I ran into this one dated February 7th: “Step into my office – a post about blogging and numbers”.

At the time I was blogging for 7 months, 3 posts a week and I was wondering if my blog’s 1.382 monthly visits (45 per day) could be qualified as ‘good’.

I wrote:

I’m now sitting in this little 5 x 5 square meter (270 square feet) office and I’m wondering: how many people would fit in here? I think these 45 people would just about fit!”

Wow! That’s my office, packed with people. Every day!!

I still like to visualise my blog traffic in that way. All these visits are real people.

But that was February. Now it’s 5 months later and I stuck with it. I wrote 3 posts a week – religiously.

And that’s pretty much all I did, with the exception of some shameless blog promotion.

Last month my blog received 5.961 visits. Here’s the year stats:

Hmmm… Not bad, methinks. In 5 months time my blog grew from 45 people per day, to about 192 per day.

I’m not sure if it’s related but we did just decide on a bigger office (see picture below). And I’m not even sure if all of you 192 peeps would fit in!

In any case: a huge thanks to you! I hope to keep seeing you on my blog. (oh – and subscribing IS an option!)

More details on facts ’n figures soon. It’s time for a blog revamp. Any suggestions are welcome!!

Below a picture of the new we do communications office: