Wednesday, October 30, 2013

You can pull a “PR-180,” engage highly influential people, and energize your content marketing strategy


By Mark Helfen

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What if you could engage with well-known and influential “thought leaders,” and in the process both develop a relationship and increase the credibility of your content production efforts. David Spark has a way. By pulling a “PR-180,” you can engage influencers, establish a relationship, and increase the reach and influence of your blog.

Spark is founder of Spark Media Solutions, a content production company. He describes himself as a “brand journalist,” and creates content of all kinds – video, written, podcasts, and more. He is about to produce his first e-book. His objective is building an editorial brand for his clients. Spark will be speaking on the topic Building Influencer Relations through Content at our next SVForum Marketing and Social Media meeting at 6:30 on Monday, November 11 at the Citrix Startup Accelerator, our usual time and location.

From Sparks perspective, content is an absolute requirement – see his post here. But attracting people who are well known influencers, who you might “never dream” could help you, increases your influence. In other words, you can create interesting content, increase its value, and develop relationships all at the same time.

The normal path is to contact the PR or media relations department at the company the influencer works for, and hope for an eventual interview. But Spark is more closely aligned to the Woody Allen quote – “Showing up is 80 percent of life.” So his interview strategy is to just show up. At trade shows, conferences, or wherever the person he wants to connect with will be found.

Of course, it not quite so simple. You need to be totally prepared. His example is a video interview, where you need to be able to have your equipment on and operating within 10 seconds, to show professionalism and competence.

An interview with an influencer posted on your blog or YouTube channel brings three values: It’s a great reason for engagement with the influencer; the credibility of your content goes up with the implied endorsement of the person being interviewed; and you can follow up and build a professional relationship.

I asked Sparks if this strategy is easily copied. Everyone does it and eventually the idea wears out its welcome. His reply was that after 7 years, “he’s still waiting for direct competition.”

Not everyone feels that they can walk up to someone they don’t know and ask to interview them.

“The first time is really uncomfortable,” he said. But you keep trying, and it gets easier. You learn to overcome what he refers to as the “the last three feet” problem approaching people at a trade show or meeting. You can also practice in a safe environment, with friends or within your own business.

So you can editorial brand value with the help of key influencers. Learn how next Monday night.



Be sure and sign up at the Marketing and Social Media Meetup site:




http://www.meetup.com/SVForum-MarketingSIG/events/146287112/



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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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Monday, October 7, 2013

YouTube has grown up – a tool for customer engagement


By Mark Helfen

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All the cute videos of puppies and babies are still on YouTube. Lady Gaga is still there too - in fact YouTube now is included in the Billboard top 100 music tracks. Hundreds of hours of video get uploaded every minute according to Google statistics, a mix of the weird, the personal, and the important.

But YouTube has also become a way to get customer and market engagement, for you, your brand, or your business. Both business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketing can benefit.

The audience is there, the analytical tools are there, and now you need to be there.

Or so says Matt Ballek, speaker at the Monday, October 14 SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG meeting. The meeting will be at our usual time and place – 6:30 at the Citrix Startup Accelerator (map). Ballek is Director of Strategic Distribution for Magnet Media, and will be speaking on the topic Measuring Success and Engagement on YouTube. You can check out his YouTube channel here.

There are lots of people spending lots of time watching YouTube. Over 1 billion unique visitors show up every month and watch over 6 billion hours of video. Or as Google puts it, “that's almost an hour for every person on Earth, and 50% more than last year.” YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network.

Ballek points out that YouTube is now a major search engine, second only to Google’s web search. Watching his YouTube channel shows Ballek’s expertise in optimizing search results, analogous SEO for Google web search results. Similar to the web search, Google uses their own analytics to judge how much value and engagement their users place on a YouTube video and uses the results to decide search placement.

In addition to search optimization, he will talk about how to design and plan your YouTube marketing, and how to use the “excellent analytic tools” that Google provides to measure your results.

Like elsewhere, content is king. “You can’t optimize unengaging videos.”

Google measures video engagement by how long viewers watch them, how often people click through to a web page, and how often they subscribe and return. High engagement gets higher search engine placement. Because the video is actually on Google’s servers, crowdsourcing based on actual viewing can be factored in.

It’s cheap to start – your smartphone has the capability to produce a useful video, and the cost keeps decreasing. You don’t need high (and expensive) production values to engage customers. What you do need is to provide information that they find interesting or useful, and worth the time. And show up on a regular basis. One idea is to set up a schedule of status updates, so that then your business makes a major announcement your customers are already connected. You can also use YouTube’s search statistics to get an idea of what people are looking for, to give you suggestions for content.

Google+ may also be part of your YouTube engagement solution. Ballek describes Google+ as “the biggest social network you didn’t know you were already using.” Like other Google services, Google+ is getting ever more closely integrated with YouTube. It can help assure more meaningful conversations, and manage customer engagement.


Be sure and sign up at the Marketing and Social Media Meetup site:





 

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.
He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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