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Blog = up? Posts = rolling? It’s time to get obsessed with your message.

A quick dictionary moment, to differentiate between your voice, your topics and your message.

• Your voice is what makes your writing distinctive, compelling, unmistakably you. You’ll carry your voice from your blog, right into your book. Seamless, identifiable. Individual.
• Your topics are the categories or subjects you write about (Eco-luxe weddings on a shoestring budget! Savvy corporate management, with heart and soul! Thrifty vegan recipes!)
• Your message is your core teaching—the why behind your what. It’s the reason you write what your write. It drives your vocation. It’s the soapbox that you’re proud to stand on. If your blog had a “life purpose” or “calling”, this’d be it. (And it goes without saying, if you’re not obsessed with your message, nobody else will be, either.)

Putting it together

Your core message is the defining character of your brand, as a writer—and for maximum visibility, you’ll apply your message to specific subjects, reaching diverse and unexpected audiences, outside of your industry. – Get Obsessed with Your Message by Danielle LaPorte

Alerti social media monitoring chart about negative and positive conversations surrounding Facebook’s iPhone app UI change:

Now that we’ve all agreed that “Content is King (Again),” and Content Marketing is all the rage, maybe it is time to think about some easy-to-follow tenets.  Let’s keep this simple.

Follow a 70/30 Rule – 70% of content curated, 30% branded.  Why? Because the rest-of-the-world is at least 70% more interesting than your brand; and, promoting external content builds social capital, makes grateful fans of influencers.

All content should be SHAREWORTHY.  Don’t publish junk.  Better to be quiet than to queer the signal-to-noise ratio.

All content should benefit SEO.  Note that search engines increasingly favor Social Signals and Blended Results (multimedia).  Keyword optimize your content whenever possible and appropriate, across all channels. – Seven Principles of Content Marketing by Todd Defren

Today on ProBlogger, we’re publishing the first in a little two-part series of posts on WordPress themes. The first is on choosing a theme, and the second is on installing themes.

Now, some ProBlogger readers might wonder if professional bloggers need this kind of information. Of course there will always be pro bloggers who haven’t ever installed a theme, and the articles may be helpful to them. But is that our key target audience here?

Understanding reader segments

The census we conducted earlier this year revealed a lot about ProBlogger readers—enough that we could break you up into different categories or audience sub-segments.

This is a useful exercise for any established blog, as it allows you to get a clearer picture of the different user types your content attracts. It can also help you to identify content gaps that you need to fill.

That’s exactly what our census did—it showed us that although many of our readers were blogging happily, and making money from their efforts, many were apprehensive about technology. There was also a specific sub-segment of bloggers who weren’t pro bloggers, but wanted to become so, and couldn’t without developing their technical skills.

“Pro” doesn’t translate to readers having professional or high-level skills in every aspect of blogging. So we need to cater to a range of skills levels in every topic we cover. – How Do You Tailor Content to Different User Levels? by Darren Rowse

• 3 Common Small Business Pricing Mistakes (Small Biz Trends)
• Social Business: Where It’s Been & Where It’s Going (Logic + Emotion)
• Social Media – A Video Creator’s Checklist From YouTube (Marketing Profs)
• Blogging Success and the Law of Averages (ProBlogger)
• Pinterest is Still Valuable for Brands (Social Harbor)
• 4 Tips For Gamifying Your Marketing Plan (Mashable!)
• 8 Ways to Get More Out of Your Facebook Fan Page Today (ProBlogger)
• Google Analytics Adds Backlinks Tracking to Social Reports (Search Engine Watch)
• Social Proof Is Real, Robust and Reliable (Small Biz Trends)
• B2B Marketing & Pinterest: 5 Tips for Becoming the Ultimate Pinner (Marketo)
• Where Do Customer Focus, Customer Obsession, Customer Centricity Reside in Your Organisation? (Future Lab)
• Money Can Buy You (Facebook) Friends, But Can It Buy You Customers? (All Facebook)
• 20 Simple Ways to Boost Blog Subscribers (HubSpot)
• Hello Again Marketing (Search Engine Guide)
• 5 Unexpected Benefits of Adding Podcasts to Your Blog (ProBlogger)
• When to Post on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr for Maximum Effect (Search Engine Watch)
• How To Build A Real-Time Commenting System (Smashing Magazine)
• Brand Participation in Product Conversions (GrowMap)
• Three Backlinking Mistakes to Avoid (Search Engine Marketing)
• How to Improve Your Email Marketing With an Integrated Approach  (HubSpot)
• Facebook Launches App Center to Improve Social App Discovery (HubSpot)
• How to Create White Papers From Your Blog Posts and Use Them Effectively (ProBlogger)
• When Someone Asks You for a Favor (Harvard Business Review)
• Stop Wasting Time: These are the Social Networks You Should Really Be Using (Business Insider)
• 3 Ways Companies Can Leverage Social Reviews (Mashable!)

With the rise in inbound marketing, more and more blogs are using white papers to promote themselves effectively. Blogs can use white papers as part of their marketing campaigns to spread expertise, generate leads, get more subscribers, and to take advantage of many other benefits. If you’re keen on learning how to write effective white papers and then use them to promote your blog, then you have to read this post!

What is a white paper?

A white paper is a cross between a magazine article and a brochure. It possesses both the educational qualities of a magazine article and the persuasive qualities of a corporate brochure. This combination of education and persuasion makes it one of the most powerful marketing tools.

How do white papers differ from guides and reports?

Guides and reports are helpful documents that usually dwell into the solution right away. There’s a brief paragraph or two as to why the guide is helpful and why they need to read the guide, and then the helpful information starts. – How to Create White Papers From Your Blog Posts and Use Them Effectively by Mitt Ray

The great thing about Instagram is the fact that a user can utilize the tool just like anyone else. While some picture taking services and sites, such as Pinterest, are best used by advanced designers and are usually only looked upon by the average Joe, Instagram is easy to use for anyone who knows how to point and shoot. This tool also has what are called “filters,” which change the picture color and tone slightly and often add borders in order to change the look of the image.

Consider the following example:

As you can see, different filters give the “normal” photo a different look. This puts a little bit of editing power into the hands of non-editors. According to co-founder Kevin Systrom in an interview with TechCrunch, Instagram is really a “storytelling service. It’s the way you go out in the world and tell a story about your life.” Because Instagram users can connect with other Instagram users, it makes it more than just a picture taking tool. Naturally, this leads many to scratch their heads and wonder: So how can this be utilized for businesses again?

Top 5 Ways to Heed the Power of Instagram

Instagram can be utilized by any business in any industry, but I would be lying if I said that it would yield great results for every type of business. The truth is—B2C businesses that sell a concrete product, such as restaurants and clothing stores, as well as bands and those in the entertainment industry are much more likely to benefit from Instagram. Companies such as law firms or Internet marketing firms will have a much tougher time taking advantage of Instagram. Nonetheless, below lists a few ways that a business can utilize this tool and get in on the phenomenon while it’s hot:

1. Find Your Fans – Know who is mentioning your brand. Go to your Instagram account, hit the profile button, hit “search Instagram,” and then hit “tags.” Once you type in the name of your company, you will be able to see all of the people who have already been using Instagram to take photos of your products. This will help give you an audience and help you identify where your power with Instagram users lies.
2. Geo-Tag – Geo-tagging photos means adding a location to every photo before putting them onto your Instagram account. Many people from out-of-town are actually beginning to use Instagram as a way to see what cool things are in a given area (much like Foursquare). Make sure that your cool photos are uploaded with your location so that out-of-towners can get some awesome local food or funky foreign outfits.
3. Contests – This is probably the most popular way that brands are leveraging the tool. Hold a contest and ask fans to take pictures using your product or hanging out in your store. Levi’s even held an open casting call on Instagram for models, and Starbucks simply asked fans to use Instagram to answer a question (completely unrelated to coffee). Ultimately, it’s all about the interaction.
4. Event Markting – This is one way any type of business can take advantage of Instagram. If you hold a seminar or an office Christmas party, take a few photos and post them to your Instagram account. Ask those attending your event to also take photos using Instagram.
5. Social Media Sharing – You can post any photo you take onto social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. If you’re starting a business and feeling overwhelmed with social media, this makes it easy to hit all of the bases in one fell swoop. Many major brands have already started their Instagram story. These brands include fashion brands such as Puma, GAP, Gucci, and Nike, and restaurant brands such as RedBull, Ben and Jerry’s, and Starbucks. Music stars such as Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber also love Instagram, and sport teams like the Chicago Bulls and Philadelphia Eagles are taking advantage. To get a larger list of brands taking advantage, visit the Instagram Notable Users Directory.

Has your business started using Instagram? How do you leverage the tool, and have you had any success?

Photo Credit: phandroid.com

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to phone systems. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including business credit cards to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business directory, Business.com.

The best time to post content with a link on Twitter is 1 to 3 p.m. EST Monday to Thursday. Over on Facebook, between 1 and 4 p.m. mid-week is the sweet spot, while Tumblr users are more likely to click after 4 p.m. and especially on Fridays. How can these networks be so different?

URL shortening service Bitly has released a series of graphs demonstrating the optimal time and day to post on each of these three social networks.

“By understanding the simple characteristics of each social network, you can publish your content at exactly the right time for it to reach the maximum number of people,” Bitly advises in their blog post announcing the data. – When to Post on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr for Maximum Effect by Miranda Miller

Alerti social media monitoring graph on social media chatter surrounding the Google Hangouts on Air release:

I put that question to Google today and I did not get an answer.  The closest I got was a checklist for a customer-centric business and a post on Amazon’s customer experience obsession.  Let’s take a look at both of these before whilst you consider the question that I have posed here.Checklist for a customer-centric business
According to the folks at YSatisfy you can determine the customer-centricity of your organisation by answering the following questions:

1.     Do your have a clear idea of  who your customers are and their needs?
2.     Do you know which of your customers are most valuable to you?
3.     Does your business strategy / mission mention anything about your customers?
4.     Do you hire / develop your staff with your customers in mind?
5.     Do you have a process by which customers and employees can give feedback and review / act on this within your business?
6.     Do you have a customer complaints process which enables quick resolution of customer problems?
7.     Are all your employees empowered to deal with customer complaints?
8.     Do you know how satisfied or loyal your customers actually are?
9.     Do you provide specific services or incentives for your most valued / loyal customers?

Do you deliver what you promise in your advertising / marketing to your customers?
This occurs to me as a list of features / characteristics as in what are the features/characteristics of a cat.   Yet, knowing the features of a cat (even if they are accurate) does not help me to locate the cat.  Where is the cat? – Where Do Customer Focus, Customer Obsession, Customer Centricity Reside in Your Organisation? by Maz Iqbal

The hype around gamification is fairly new, but the idea has been around for some time. In fact, badges and leader boards could be considered the new sweepstakes and loyalty rewards. And gamification is not just for major consumer brands and their tech-savvy 18-to-34-year-old demographic. There are examples where gamification in marketing has worked spectacularly for 50-year-old rural ranchers. In other words, any audience is up for grabs.

That said, marketers can’t just add a Groupon-style approach to something and think it’s gamified. If you’re thinking about giving gamification a test run, here are four steps to help you get it right with your next marketing campaign.

1. Decide on the Right Opacity

Do you want this to actually feel like a game for your customers or do you want game mechanics buried deep enough that your target may not realize why the experience is so compelling? Many game mechanics are those hidden hooks in video games that tap into psychological triggers that drive behavior. You can apply these same hooks to a marketing campaign for any audience, whether they are into traditional video games or not. If you’re still scratching your head, or if you work for an organization that doesn’t do change well, consider trying gamification lite. – 4 Tips For Gamifying Your Tired Marketing Plan by Darren Steele

“Chasing the past, I stumbled into the future”. – T A Sachs

I’ve always been a firm believer that in order to look to the future, we must look back to and fully grasp the past (and the present). Having had several recent engaging conversations with smart people who I respect, I’ve picked up a hint of exhaustion around usage of the word “social”. Could it be that some who saw the “change” coming years ago are weary of having carried that torch for so many years as we move into the heavy lifting? It’s natural to want to move to the next thing—but I’m convinced that today we are largely still talking about the “social media” era. The best of “social business” is yet to come in my opinion and we have a lot of work to do in between. Let’s take a look back before we begin to look forward.

Digital: The Interactive Revolution When I entered the workplace—the world was already in the process of going digital. E-mail was just being introduced and I had gotten a job immediately largely because I entered the business world with a valuable skill—I was taught desktop publishing (ie computer aided design) in addition to design fundamentals. The digital revolution initially begun by replacing the analogue world. Music was digital and computers offered an interactive medium to produce upon. Digital began seeping into personal and professional lives and organizations, businesses and industries had to evolve along with it. Most did and the ones that didn’t were outperformed. – Social Business: Where It’s Been & Where It’s Going by David Armano

• 10 ways to get into big trouble in marketing (Portent)
• How to Fight for More Social Media Resources In Your Company (Convince & Convert)
• If Your Email Newsletter Isn’t Generating Cash, Your Doing Something Wrong (ProBlogger)
• How Social Login Impacts Ecommerce (Get Elastic)
• 27 Awesome Ways to Get People to Listen to You (ProBlogger)
• Study shows that consumers are frustrated with online paying (The Strategy Web)
• Marketing Failing to Grasp Search, Brands Say (nmk)
• How Does Social Media Affect Website Search Rankings? (Social Times)
• New GMail ImageFeature Makes Email Marketing More Social (HubSpot)
• Embracing Your Extrovert in Business (Outspoken Media)
• Who Googled You? This Website Knows (Mashable!)
• 12 Best Email Marketing Tips for Professionals (CIO.com)
• Celebrate Mashable’s Social Media Day 2012 (Mashable!)
• Thoughts are Things: Are Yours Good For Business? (Small Biz Trends)
• Evolving Social Media Analytics: Insights from Marshall Sponder (Socialnomics)
• Twitter Update Makes it Easier for Users to Discover Your Marketing Content (HubSpot)
• Five Ways To Get More Facebook Comments (All Facebook)
• 7 Rules for Responding to Customers Online (Mashable!)
• 13 Ways to Create a Cringeworthy Social Media Presence (HubSpot)
• Yahoo Launches Dashboard for Small Businesses (eConsultancy)
• Why Google Is Not Going Away (All Things Digital)
• LinkedIn’s Mobile Future: 22 Percent of Visitors Are Mobile, In-Stream Ads Coming? (Tech Crunch)
• Pinterest: It’s Time to Go ‘Pinternational’ (Mashable!)
• Who Will Survive the Social Media Bubble? (ReadWriteWeb)
• Is It Time to Stop Listening to Social Media? (Spin Sucks)

Shhhh. Can you hear it? It’s the sound of yet another corporate giant falling to its knees after a tidal wave of social media criticism.

Corporate capitulation is happening with frightening regularity these days. We no longer look at the Fortune 500 as impenetrable monoliths; instead, they now appear as dominoes ready to topple at the first flick of public outcry via the Twitterverse.

When do ‘we the people’ stop having a point? And when do we as communicators stop listening to it?

Are we counseling our clients/organizations to respond because it’s the right thing to do or are we being bullied into it via the blogosphere?

Effective social media advocacy campaigns typically start with a like-minded demographic – underlining the ‘strength in numbers’ theory.  Mom bloggers first made waves with the makers of Motrin and then took public umbrage at JC Penney’s “I’m too pretty to do homework” T-shirt debacle.  In both cases, McNeil Laboratories and JC Penney bowed to the pressure and removed their campaigns. – Is It Time To Stop Listening to Social Media? by Elissa Freeman

Future of Publishing is sponsored by VigLink. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to Like Future of Publishing on Facebook!

The savviest of inbound marketers know that content creation is at the heart of a successful inbound marketing strategy. But if marketers are consistently pumping out tons and tons of content, what you end up with is a cluttered web that will only get more cluttered, right?

These days, content discovery is a big problem, both as a user and as a marketer. Your audience is constantly struggling to separate the wheat from the chaff, and as a marketer, you’re always looking for ways to make sure your content gets in front of the eyes of that audience.

The good news is, search engines and social networks have been trying to make content discovery and delivery a little bit easier lately. For example, we’ve witnessed LinkedIn’s launch of more robust content targeting tools; Google’s pushes to reward high quality content and penalize low-quality, spammy content in search; and various other efforts by Google and social networks to provide more relevant, personalized content to its users. – Twitter Update Makes it Easier for Users to Discover Your Marketing Content by Pamela Vaughan

Highlights:

• Integrate SMM tools into your social marketing campaigns.
• Analyze the data they give you to improve those campaigns.
• Try tools that fit your budget and needs!
• Newlands recommends Alerti since it has good analytics and a free 90 day trial.

Today’s consumers want to connect with businesses in a variety of ways, but the sophisticated consumers in your database and on your subscriber list are not willing to tolerate generic email blasts from corporations. Email campaigns must be targeted and relevant to the customer. It all starts with knowing the best email marketing tips and strategies to obtain customer data and how to reach your consumers wherever they are online.

To find out what email marketing tips are trending and showing success with list subscribers, CIO.com spoke with leading email marketing vendors and analysts to come up with this best-of-breed email marketing tactics list.

1. Capture Emails With Double Opt-In

“Using double opt-in forms on websites, blogs, social media pages and anywhere prospective recipients may be looking to stay in touch with you is a must,” says Paul Turnbull, product marketing manager at Campaigner. Double opt-in means the system sends a confirmation request to the submitted email address, requiring the owner to take an action—usually click a link in the email—to confirm that they are the email address owner and want to subscribe to the mail list. – 12 Best Email Marketing Tips for Professionals by Vangie Beal

Alarming research out in February 2012 from the Internet Advertising Bureau pinpoints the lack of understanding of search engine optimisation (SEO) among marketers. In its Search Marketing Barometer 2012 survey, an incredible 72 per cent of brands admitted that do not – or only partially – integrate search into their wider marketing.

Out of 200 brands interviewed, 94 per cent of brands said they had more opportunities to integrate search into campaigns and 62 per cent of those who had integrated search said that had seen “tangible benefits”.

For Marshall Manson, managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa for PR firm Edelman, it comes as no surprise that many brands already integrating search into their marketing strategies are reaping the rewards.  - Marketers failing to grasp search, brands say by Chris Lee