founders, VC's, mentors and startup experts.
Maybe more than anything else we've produced, our company's research has been the most critical to growing our brand and gaining new customers. Three years ago, the Content Marketing Institute partnered with MarketingProfs to develop a benchmark study for the content marketing industry. Today, this research is shared and engaged in by more marketing professionals than any other piece of industry r ...
|
Via: Fruit Business
Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent). Get Content Get C |
Do you know why your content marketing campaign is going to fail? It's not because you can't write great content... it's actually because you don't know how to promote it. You can learn how to write great content, but if no one reads your content and links to it, there's no point in putting it. ...
|
Via: Quick Sprout
I'm Kind of a Big Deal |
The great content marketing debate over quality information versus frequency raged on last week. Following the debate I realized content burnout is an issue I suffered from in the past and resolved. Here is my answer to the inevitable issue of burnout. ...
|
Marketing strategist. Author. Agent for change. Amateur phot |
For any piece of content to be successful, it has to be personalized and speak to a specific person (a potential buyer), with a specific need, at a specific point in his or her buyer journey. Put another way, you have to have targeted content that reflects a deep understanding of who your audience and where they are on their way down the path to purchase. ...
|
Via: Convince & Convert
Director of Content Strategy @OpenViewVenture; world travele |
Sree Vijaykumar is the founder of TradeBriefs, which helps every professional become an industry expert through daily email newsletters. Sree explains how he acquired 400,000 subscribers to his newsletter. ...
|
Via: 500 Startups
Entrepreneur, Thinker, Doer in Online Media and Retail. Libe |
Some successful community professionals express surprise that community building is such hard work. They launched their communities and it just took off. Yes, this really happens. Communities can go from inception to maturity in a matter of weeks. ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
Years ago I wrote a blog post about how important keyword research is to SEO. The basic point is that you don't want to be optimizing for content that people aren't searching for. My favorite example is that people search for "car" and not "automobile", it simply puts why keyword research is important. ...
|
Via: Tony Adam's Thoughts
Founder & CEO of @eventup - we're changing the way people bo |
I recently launched Sidebar, a new project (more about that another day). Sidebar simply gives you the 5 best design links of the day. So as part of the curation process, I get to see a lot of design-related content. And reading all this content, I can't help but see a trend: lazy writing. What do I mean by this? I mean blog posts that do not require their author to do any research, talk to anybo ...
|
Via: SachaGreif.com
Designer from Paris, now living in Osaka. Creator of @YoFoly |
All online businesses want links. To get links using content, it seems like an easy equation: epic content = a lot of links. But what exactly does epic content mean? Oftentimes the task of developing epic content is left to creative types; leaving them with little more than the goal of having it "go viral". Sure, there are a lot of really great ideas out there that can be categorized as "epic", bu ...
|
Head of Outreach @Distilled. Blogger. Graphic Designer. Food |
"Don't Wake Up With Your Website in a Ditch" Expand Your Content and Your Contributors to Keep Your Content Marketing Strategy Humming. As content explodes around you, if you are the only person contributing to your content marketing strategy, I hate to break it to you, but you're going to be in trouble ...
|
Via: Duct Tape Marketing
Vice President Marketing & Strategy for Percussion Software, |
Does your team have a smiling face, who sits behind a desk and pitches content marketing all day? That's your sales team -- I mean, your blogger outreach team. Fortunately, your blogger outreach team is selling what people want: free, mutual-benefit content. To improve the placement rate of your blogger outreach team, you should leverage the following sales lessons as methods for proving value. ...
|
Via: SEOmoz
Chief Development Officer for an online media company. Entr |
So, you've run your chosen business terms through a keyword research tool and come up with a few potential phrases that will form the basis of your on-site and off-site SEO campaigns. That's a great start, but relying too heavily on a single tool could set you up for failure ...
|
Entrepreneur & Internet Marketer. CEO of @SingleGrain |
The story of why we started a fully focused content marketing strategy here at Buffer is actually one that isn't glamorous at all. It was born out of pure necessity that we couldn't get any press coverage for the launch of Buffer. For the first few weeks I was on board, I tried restlessly to [...] ...
|
Via: Buffer Blog
Co-founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share Tweets, Fac |
Listening is hard - The most obvious reason why we focus so much on monitoring and jump into analyzing is that listening is hard. ...
|
Via: Conversation Agent
Sr. Director Strategy, Empathy Lab. [Make sense. Make do. Ma |
Try asking your members this. Create the thread, turn it into a sticky thread, include it in your mailing list, add your own problem, and see what response you get. ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
Brevity rules. Brevity works. Brevity is super-cool. Why? Because it makes you a kick-ass writer. That's why. Good, concise writing is more than just writing. It's art in its purest form. It's expressing your thoughts like no other. ...
|
Via: Copymatter
Innovative ideas and practical how-to advice to help you bec |
To be successful at anything, you first need to know WHY you are doing it. Anyone who blogs for business (and every other organization) needs a content marketing mission statement - an answer to WHY. Do you know why your business exists, why you do what you do? ...
|
Via: Fruit Business
Geek, published researcher, award-winning teacher, eternally |
Despite the recent success of this blog over the past year (250,000 uniques, hundreds of new subscribers, republished in Lifehacker and others) the truth is that I've been a failed blogger for far more time than I've been a successful one. ...
|
Via: Dan Shipper
UPenn junior. Co-Founder at @UseFirefly. Jets fan. |
BLOGTASTIC is a free book by Rajesh Shetty that will make you think about how you can contribute more, make a difference through your blog AND accelerate your own growth. If you have a blog or even if you are remotely interested in blogging, you will get something out of the book - now and for the future. ...
|
Via: Rajesh Setty
Bringing Ideas to Life. With Love! Rajesh is an entrepreneur |
There is a very good chance anyone reading this is already familiar with the concept of evergreen content; or content that is perpetually relevant. Most of us have experienced at least one piece of content that holds timeless in the usefulness of its information. Creating content that is just as useful five years down the road as it was the day it was published is not easy, but it's possible. ...
|
Via: SEOmoz
VP Digital Strategy at W.L. Snook & Associates. Partner @Fac |
Communities for start-ups tend to take one of two approaches. The first approach is the most common. The community manager is hired to manage the growing community. They respond to questions. They distribute information. They bring feedback from the community... The second approach is less common, but far more beneficial. Here the community manager is hired to connect and grow an audience of passi ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
A transition is in effect. The web is maturing and like any form of media that has gone before it that can mean only one thing: That content is now at the epicentre of audience creation once again. The introduction of Penguin, as we know, is forcing every online business to re-examine how it 'does' online marketing and begin looking for ways to grow reputation, reach and visibility via content ra ...
|
Via: SEOmoz
SEO Consultant, SEOmoz Associate & State of Search blogger. |
With the rise of social media, it's never been easier to conduct simple market research with a little bit of collaboration and creativity. Here are three simple ways that you can effectively use social media to gather market research without the resources, cost and time. ...
|
Via: Likeable Media
social media enthusiast with a passion for health education, |
We use content to grow communities, be more visible in search, engage with influencers and advocates and more importantly to change behaviors. Truth is, everything we do as communicators and marketers revolves around content across paid, earned and owned media channels. Content is the lifeline of the social ecosystem. ...
|
Via: Edelman Digital
SVP, Social Business Planning @edelmandigital. Hustler. Lake |
The Lean Startup model created by Eric Ries has been applied to a lot of different industries. Turns out, it's the most efficient way to approach community building as well. I've been taking a lean approach to building community after 4 years of learning from things that worked and, more importantly, things that didn't work. ...
|
Via: Social Fresh
|
Getting potential customers to your landing page is tough and first impressions are serious business. But what if you could give people another chance to convert... every single week? You can. It's called Content Marketing. And here's what it is, in a nutshell: you create high-value content that is tied to your site in some way, and you make it very easy for people to distribute it for you. ...
|
Via: Intigi
Writing, photography, music, wool socks, a good night's slee |
Are you up against competition that has deep pockets and can outspend you in traditional advertising methods? Does it seem like a losing battle to go head-to-head with them to get new prospects? Particularly for startup companies, using traditional advertising and marketing methods can get expensive...especially if you're up against an established company with more money than you. ...
|
I'm Kind of a Big Deal |
The phrase "Content Marketing" describes marketing by attracting potential customers with content that interests them. All content should have that goal however, not just the stuff produced by the "content marketing" project. Blogging, eBooks, and webinars are universally regarded as marketing materials, but other equally important content like FAQs, Docs, Press Releases, Welcome messages, etc. ...
|
Via: Swombat on Startups
Cofounder of GrantTree and Woobius, Blogger @ http://swombat |
There’s a reason why Google grew so huge, so fast. And no, it has nothing to do with their PageRank technology. Any guesses? Okay, time’s up. The big G turned big because it managed to gain a tremendous amount of mindshare. Google today does not rule the search engine arena. It rules minds. It’s become a sort of a go-to destination for most Internet users. Let’s just say they hope ...
|
Via: Copymatter
Innovative ideas and practical how-to advice to help you bec |
Did you know that marketing your company doesn't have to be hard or expensive? In fact, with a little creativity you can generate some serious interest in your company that can lead to more traffic, more customers and more money. ...
|
I'm Kind of a Big Deal |
If you consider that content marketing consists of two separate but equal activities: creating and communicating. Communication is the "marketing" part of content marketing. If all of your time and energy go into creating content, you are likely to run out of time and energy for the equally important job of effectively communicating that content to the right audience. ...
|
Via: Savvy B2B Marketing
Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North. Let's |
Given the impact of social media across the enterprise and culturally, social media risk is now a governance board level issue for most companies. But yet very few boards are actively addressing the potential risks from social media. ...
|
Via: Ronin Research
Principal Analyst @AltimeterGroup and a right proper rogue! |
Back in the early days of Forrst, when there were just a few hundred people signed up, and perhaps only a few dozen using it on any given day, I was naturally the most prolific user -- I didn't realize it then, but it's so important to be your own best user ...
|
Via: Kyle Bragger
Founded @forrst. Married to @fameandfrippery. Writing http:/ |
As marketers, we now have the power to create content of all types and deliver them directly to our customers and prospects. It was not too long ago that this wasn't the case. Unfortunately, just because we can, doesn't mean we should. ...
|
Via: Convince & Convert
Content Marketing Institute. SocialTract. Get Content Get Cu |
As marketers, we all know that word-of-mouth advertising represents the "Holy Grail" of promotions. When your business is so universally-known and well-regarded that you no longer need to invest significant amounts of capital in acquiring new clients, you're able to free up both time and money ...
|
Co-founder of Single Grain, a digital marketing agency based |
Eric Paley of Founder Collective facilitated an awesome panel at the 2012 Nantucket Conference around startups whose businesses are built on the contributions not of their employees but of people in the communities they've created: uTest, Skillshare, and GrabCAD. In each case, without their community (testers, teachers or engineers, respectively) - there is no business. ...
|
Via: Hacker Chick
Hacker Chick ~ startup guardian angel ~ awesomely eclectic |
This presents a fantastic opportunity for organizations, and every company now has the chance to become a media company by using content to tell its story. Text, infographics, video, images and slides are the tools which bring this concept to life; helping to drive awareness, engagement and traffic. ...
|
Via: Edelman Digital
Remote working, insight delivering PR guy @EdelmanDigital. I |
What makes a start-up successful? Why do some start-ups thrive while others failure? Why do some products resonate with users, while similar products fail to get any traction? ...
|
Via: Mark Evans Tech
Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad, |
It's becoming more clear that design is being used as a credibility and professionalism booster, so I'm beginning to put my own preferences aside and join the crowd. That's why in this article I'd like to show you a few examples of how people are mixing the power of long-form salesletters with the professionalism many of today's consumers are coming to expect. ...
|
Expert Direct Response Copywriter & Split-Testing Specialis |
Let's split community feedback on your products/services into two types; prompted and unprompted. Prompted feedback happens when you ask members to give you feedback. Forum questions, surveys, focus groups etc are all prompted feedback. Unprompted is when it comes up in community discussions (or complaints). ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
It seems like in B2B we are always in a rush. The next trade show, the next product release, the upcoming networking event. And unfortunately, it seems like content is always the last thing on the to-do list for these events. That results in a rush job that stresses everyone out (from the sales person to the print shop) and all that effort frequently ends up getting scrapped after the event becaus ...
|
Via: Savvy B2B Marketing
Hi-tech marketing communications copywriter, beagle lover an |
If you're thinking about starting a business or even if you've already started one, don't spend your time fussing over spreadsheets, logos, budgets or competition. Those are all parts of the puzzle, but if you want to build a business that cannot fail, spend what may feel like an exorbitant amount of time focused on building and nourishing a community. ...
|
Via: Duct Tape Marketing
I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us |
Many of the things believed about community management aren't true. They've been disproven by data and studies. 1) Lurkers are unlikely to ever become active members ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
It helps if you have an existing list of contacts to launch a community. This is how most communities founded by amateurs begin. The founder reaches out to people they've known for years. They know these people are interested in joining a community. ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
It's better to cater to the most hardcore fans of the topic. Some people worry about this. They worry that if the discussions are too technical, too geeky, too wierd, too extreme, they will lose the less committed. This is... ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
I was recently thinking about what would a minimal, initial team for a software startup comprise of. Imagine you have a brilliant idea for a startup and you have some funds to hire an initial team. But like most smart entrepreneurs, you want to hire a minimal team first and only expand late Possibly related posts (automagically generated):Beautiful Design by JayAppointment Reminde ...
|
Via: Paras Chopra
Startups and Online Marketing enthusiast |
An organization will have a few experts generate activity in the community. The experts will write lots of content. The organization promotes this content to its audience. The audience visits, but doesn't participate. Why? Because they just came to read. They're information-seekers. ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
The more power you share with the community, the most active members will be. Yes, you have less control. But you trade control for participation. The mentality changes. You're not building a community for members. You're building a community with members ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
We're all guilty of publishing fluff from time to time. I've done it plenty of times. Even Derek has done it on occasion. What matters is your fluff-to-epic-shit ratio. What's your ratio right now? How many fluff posts do you publish for every epic post? The better the ratio (fewer fluff posts to each epic post), the bigger and stronger your audience will grow. ...
|
Via: Think Traffic
Founder of Think Traffic. Creator of Fizzle: Honest Online B |
More than 95% of your visitors won't buy anything on their first visit. They're either just browsing, still in the research phase or not entirely sure yet your offer is what they need. It takes time to build trust and instill confidence ...
|
Via: ConversionXL
I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o |
When we look at the online and mobile behavior of connected customers, a sense of responsibility emerges as everyday people become media beacons in their own right. As such, they rigorously share and curate for their audience with an editorial-style approach as what was once a static audience is now an audience with an audience of audiences ...
|
Via: Brian Solis Blog
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Solis |
Turn Your Business Into a Community Building PlatformThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I believe the future of business and commitment building resides in the idea of viewing your business as a platform for your community. The notion of a platform is one that receives a fair amount of play in various c ...
|
Via: Duct Tape Marketing
I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us |
If I asked you how much your community is worth, could you tell me? Most community managers can't. These same community managers will then complain they don't get the attention or support they need. If you're not getting the attention. ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
Let's get this out of the way immediately. Sturgeon's Law can't be denied by any man, woman, child … or community, for that matter. Meta community, I love you to death, so let's be honest with each other: most of the feedback and feature requests you give us are just not, uh, er … actionable, for a zillion different reasons. ...
|
Via: Coding Horror
Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of http://stackoverflow.com an |
The secret of becoming good at anything is daily practice. Do you want to become proficient at articulating concepts to sell, influence, and get the most out of opportunities? Write daily -- a blog post, commentary, notes to fuel articles, op eds, and interviews. ...
|
Via: Conversation Agent
Sr. Director Strategy, Empathy Lab. [Make sense. Make do. Ma |
Recently, my friend Dave Gardner (president of Gardner & Associates Consulting) shared his story of how he used social media to reach (and start a working relationship with) a big company (Dell.) The story was fascinating and it was very different from the stories that are common out there. The common stories have a general [...] ...
|
Via: Rajesh Setty
Bringing Ideas to Life. With Love! Rajesh is an entrepreneur |
5 Ways to Get Your Customers to Create Content For YouThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing 5 Ways to Get Your Customers to Create Content For YouThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing You’ve heard enough about the need to produce content that I’m guessing you’re probably blogging away and curating, aggregating and filtering all manner of content. But there’s one type ...
|
Via: Duct Tape Marketing
I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us |
Start in problem solving mode. Focus your first issue on how you have tackled and resolved any gaps between making and delivering promises to them. Take the top three most commented questions you find in industry forums and blogs, on Quora, and on LinkedIn. ...
|
Via: Conversation Agent
Sr. Director Strategy, Empathy Lab. [Make sense. Make do. Ma |
The map is based upon the online community lifecycle. Over the past few decades the lifecycle has been developed by academics, refined by practitioners and perfected by us. There are four stages to online community development. These are inception, establishment, maturity and mitosis (there is death too, but lets skip that for now). ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
How much of your community growth is driven by referrals (word-of-mouth)? How many members visit from links to discussions shared via members on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn and other platforms? How much growth comes via pages you've set up especially... ...
|
Via: Feverbee
Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy |
Are you considering using a sweepstakes or contest for an upcoming social media marketing campaign? Ever wonder exactly how a social sweepstakes ties in with the idea of “viral” marketing? In this article, I’ll analyze the concepts affecting a social media “viral sweepstakes” and how marketers can and (potentially) should take advantage. What Exactly Is [...] ...
|
Mobile marketing executive - follow me @waterfallmobile |
According to Seth Godin, the secret of marketing is: the first ten. So who are the ten? These are your early customers, the ten people who will listen, read or buy whatever you are selling. If they don’t love it, you need a new product. Which means you will have to start over. But if [...] ...
|
Via: Quick Sprout
I'm Kind of a Big Deal |
How will social media impact businesses in 2012? We sought expert opinions from a wide range of pros you’re likely familiar with. We are grateful for the dozens of social media professionals who have written over 600 articles for us since we started Social Media Examiner in October 2009. To give you a glimpse of [...] ...
|
Director of Editorial at Social Media Examiner. I've a back |
A cried a little on a plane last week. It wasn’t due to a delay, an uncomfortable seat, or peanut salt getting in my eye. It was because I saw a shining example of “social business” at work in the real world. Mid-way on a Southwest Airlines flight home from a speaking engagement in Ft. ...
|
Via: Convince & Convert
Hype-free social media strategist & keynote speaker. Tequila |
So, it turns out we use the internet to share things. A lot of things to be exact. Clearspring, a Washington, DC-based company shows us exactly what was passed around the internet this year and just how it was shared with some fancy looking graphics to boot. Clearspring owns the sharing platform ‘AddThis’, which you’ve almost certainly scene if you’ve visited a website in t ...
|
Via: Bostinnovation
Staff Writer, InTheCapital.com. Tech, Politics, Media. Gener |
- beta (7)
- Development (44)
- Features (23)
- Pricing (42)
- Product Management (41)
- Rapid Prototyping (8)
- Usability (12)
- User Engagement (15)
- Wow Factor (5)
- Advertising (9)
- Branding (10)
- Competition (16)
- Customer Acquisition (30)
- Demand Creation (2)
- Launch (14)
- Lead Generation (5)
- Market Positioning (6)
- Marketing (97)
- Networking (8)
- Pitching (26)
- PR (13)
- Pre Launch (2)
- Press (3)
- Product Marketing (31)
- Sales (48)
- Value Proposition (14)
- Viral Marketing (10)
- Word of Mouth (5)
- Blogging (8)
- Community Management (19)
- Content Development (9)
- Content Marketing (26)
- Email Marketing (2)
- Inbound Marketing (4)
- SEO (6)
- Social Media Marketing (8)
- Angel Investors (10)
- Bootstrapping (15)
- Burn Rate (1)
- Equity (26)
- Funding (64)
- Valuation (5)
- VCs (24)
- Advise and Tips (220)
- Book (4)
- Business Planning (11)
- Case Studies (45)
- How To (105)
- Interviews (11)
- Lessons Learned (63)
- Methodologies (19)
- Mistakes (104)
- Opinion (119)
- Advisers (9)
- Co-founders (33)
- Culture (39)
- Hiring (62)
- Mentors (10)
- Organization (9)
- Team (85)
- Work Ethics (3)
- Decision Making (18)
- Entrepreneurial Skills (29)
- Leadership (29)
- Negotiation (1)
- Passion (4)
- Persistance (9)
- Technical Skills (12)
