28 October 2013

How to craft emotional messages to put into your content

From the Harvard Business Review:
If strong emotional activation is the key to viral success, how can brands best craft highly emotional messages with their content. 
First, think carefully about how your company, product or service is related to a topic or topics that taps into deep-seated human emotions within your target demographic. 
The goal is to find the link to an issue that plagues your consumers and relates directly or even tangentially to your brand or product. At the same time, you must make sure that the topic you choose also positively reflects the position of your brand. Using the example of the Dove Face Sketch campaign mentioned above, it is clear that its viral success was the result of its ability to tap into a deep emotional reaction to commonly felt feelings of inadequacy and low self esteem. Dove created a positive emotional reaction by creating solidarity through their campaign. Their content delivered the message “Many women don’t see themselves for how pretty they really are — let’s change that.” Dove’s content engaged strong emotions – even difficult emotions – but managed to win by presenting a more important overarching idea.

23 October 2013

Why your Twitter bio is important


 "Your Twitter bio should position you as an expert in your field who serves a specific audience," states Dan Schawbel, author of Promote Yourself and Me 2.0. 
"The objective is to position your personal brand so you're using the right keywords and clearly showing what your focus is so people read it and know exactly what you do and whom you serve." 
As well as widening your appeal for potential followers, Schawbel suggests this tactic may help your future job prospects. 
"I did a study with American Express and we found that 65% of managers are looking to hire and promote subject matter experts. The problem is that most people position themselves as generalists or 'Jacks-of-all-trades,' and that won't work in this economy," he says.

03 October 2013

What does Google Hummingbird mean for content marketing?

From Jason Williams at the Inbound Marketing Blog:
SEO’s from around the world are dissecting and testing the new search algorithm on test sites to check for anything that could concern clients. But since being released over a month ago with little to no impact on the search engine optimization community, it is likely that there is nothing to worry about. 
One thing we’ve always recommended to our clients is to always be asking and answering your client’s questions within your site. As search queries get more complicated and algorithms have the ability to find more complex results, answering the questions your clients are asking can only help you in the future. Here’s what I’m talking about… 
  • Create a list the top 10 questions your clients are asking you or about your industry 
  • Create new pages on your site centered around those questions and great answer 
Answering your clients’ questions helps them solve a problem and can ultimately make you an authority on a topic or subject. When they are ready to buy your product or service, they want to buy from a trusted authority. It appears that Google’s Hummingbird algorithm may just give an advantage in search results to the people that answer the common questions for their clients. As for now, Hummingbird appears to be as sweet as it sounds.