Online marketing that works
Over the past few years, I’ve conducted a number of focus groups on subjects ranging from email marketing to blogging.
When I ask participants why they’ve chosen to receive emails from a particular source, read a specific blogger, or follow a certain Twitter user, they give me a variation on the same answer:
“Because I like their unique point of view.”
Readers will only listen to you if you’re giving them something they can’t find anywhere else.
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Oh Paul Christoforo, what would we have done last week without you?
Twas the week between Christmas and New Year’s. There wasn’t much to read, not much going on other than the whole annoying “real life” thing.
Just when we were nearly reduced to checking out our weird cousin Lenny’s 120-part Facebook timeline of meringue sculpture, we were blessed with a stunning social media fail.
An irresistible account of arrogance, cluelessness, and incompetence described in a post on Penny Arcade — appropriately titled Just Wow.
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It’s the online business equivalent of jeans that don’t make your butt look big. Social media ROI is everyone’s holy grail of the moment.
And it’s easy to see why. If a business is going to put the time, effort, and attention into social media marketing, it would be nice to think we’d actually get some sales out of it.
In other words, we want a return on our investment.
Sonia Simone talked recently with Sean Jackson, Copyblogger Media’s CFO, about the ROI of social media. She expected to hear one answer, but was surprised to get something very different.
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Welcome to The Lede.
Every week I’ll be digging up and linking to stories, news, and opinion relevant to online marketing and copywriting.
Email, social media, innovation, SEO, productivity, mobile, conversion, publishing, and everything in between.
No commentary, just a fast, single page of headlines that you can grab, scan, and squeeze for all they may (or may not) be worth.
All right then, on with it …
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During his career he was loved, hated, admired, dissed, fought over … but never ignored.
His name? Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y …
Picasso.
Anybody with a name like that was bound to lead a big, bold, messy life, and Picasso did exactly that.
I have to confess that I’ve had a creative crush on him ever since I first encountered his work in my college art history class.
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In my opinion, the most powerful social media profile you can use is the LinkedIn profile.
Most powerful that is, if you are looking to do more business and/or achieve your professional goals.
There’s a certain mindset LinkedIn members have when they spend time there.
They don’t browse through pictures and videos of their friends.
They don’t go there to share 140 characters of their current status.
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