Digital marketing is about lots of little things, not one big one. This list is half-list, half-procedure. If you go down these items in order it might give you a decent internet marketing plan for the next few months. If you have others, post ’em as comments:

1. If you have one of those nifty rotating preload things on your site, delete it. If you don’t agree, try this: Shove your head into a bucket of water. Stay in there, not breathing, for 5 seconds longer than is comfortable. That’s what you’re doing to your customers. Delete it, please.
2. If that’s impossible, make sure it shows for no more than 1-2 seconds.
3. Check the load speed of every page on your site. If any load in more than 3 seconds, fix it (1 second is far better). If your developer says they can’t, and they can’t point to another problem, fire them.
4. Check your site for broken links. You can use a tool like Screaming Frog. Fix those links. Do not pass this step until you’re done. If it takes your developer more than a week to do this step, again with the firing thing.
5. Make sure you have a user-friendly 404 error page, not the generically nasty PAGE NOT FOUND message.
6. Make sure you have a user-friendly 500 error page, too. A 500 error happens when some bit of database code you wrote late at night decides it’s had enough with this world, and takes your web site with it. That usually leads to something terribly informative like “500 Error Connection Timed Out”. Maybe you can do something better?
7. Remove any inline javascript longer than 20 or so lines to a separate .js include file. That will speed up page load times. Plus it appeals to code geeks like me, and we’re all that matter, right?
8. Set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. You’ll see your site from the search engine’s viewpoint, what folks use to find you, and whether there are any problems that might be hurting you in the search engines.
9. Set up an XML sitemap, too. Check out Sitemaps.org for an overview.
10. If you’re running an e-commerce site, hire a really good writer to rewrite all your product descriptions. Those descriptions matter more than you think.
11. Get analytics set up on your site. You can’t do internet marketing without it. Actually, you can, but you’ll suck at it. I recommend Google Analytics. Also, understand that “set up” means conversion tracking, attribution modeling, onsite search tracking, etc. If your developer says they can’t install anything, well, you know…
12. Review the onsite search tracking data you are now collecting. Make sure you provide clear answers to the top searches/questions on your home page. It’s an instant win.
13. Put your full address and phone number on each page. Use Schema markup to indicate this is your organization’s contact data.
14. Use one of many nifty keyword discovery tools to find the top keywords that folks use to find your products or services.
15. Now find the top ranking sites for those phrases.
16. Who links to them? Use Majestic or Moz’s Open Site Explorer to find links they have but you don’t. Now go out and get those links!
17. If five years ago some SEO hack advised you to put “SEO links” at the bottom of your pages, delete them. They’re not helping you, and they may be hurting you.
18. If five years ago that same SEO hack advised you to write title tags that read like this – “Wedding stuff and wedding things and weddings stuffs and weddings things with more wedding items and this is your place for weddings” – delete those too and write something that doesn’t sound like Elmer Fudd suffering a mental breakdown.
19. Delete the keywords tag.
20. Stop using nofollow in an attempt to “sculpt pagerank.” It never worked. It sure as hell doesn’t work now.
21. Write a high-quality meta description tag for each page of your site. That may not affect ranking but it’ll get more folks to click on your search listing.
22. Make sure your site uses correct structured markup. Your developer had better understand what that means. Don’t make me come over there…
23. Get your site totally standards compliant according to the W3C code validator. Well, maybe not totally, but as close as you can.
24. At the same time, make sure your site isn’t hideously ugly.
25. Run Google’s mobile friendly test
    on your site. Do what it recommends.
26. Learn to use Feedly. Subscribe to the top internet marketing blogs. Read them a lot. For a hint you can look at the AdAge 150 list.
27. Go to Google News search. Search for your own brand name. Then subscribe to that search result in Feedly (you’ll find a little RSS link on the search results page). That gives you a quick look at what folks are saying about your company.
28. Do the same thing for your own name.
29. Go to local directories like Yelp! and make sure you’re listed, with correct information.
30. Be sure your company information is up to date in Google and Bing’s local listings tools, too.
31. If you’re a local business, ask your customers to review you on one of the local sites: Either on the search engines or on the other sites. This will boost your ranking in local search results. And don’t worry if you get a few negative reviews, either.
32. Start doing Google My Business Posts! They’re almost certainly a local search ranking factor.
33. Invite people to subscribe to your house e-mail list. If you don’t have one, start one. This continues to be one of the most neglected facets of internet marketing.
34. Make sure there’s an easy way for folks to sign up for that list.
35. Remove any extra fields from your subscription form. All you need is their e-mail address.
36. If you require registration during checkout, get rid of it.
37. If you’re automatically opting folks in to your e-mail list, stop.
38. When you receive customer requests via e-mail, answer them. Fast.
39. Remember that house e-mail list I got you to start building? Start sending out a quality offer to that list, once a month. See how it works. Keep testing different types of subject lines, creative, offers and such. Always strive to beat your last best performance.
40. Now you’re ready for some real online marketing (yes, all this was a warm up). Create a landing page for the best offer you’ve got. Follow best practices.
41. Create 2-3 headlines for that page.
42. Write a few different versions of body text for the landing page.
43. And finally use a couple of different images.
44. Use that email list to do lookalike audiences on Adwords, Facebook, and other networks that allow it.
45. Then use a multivariate testing tool like Optimizely or Unbounce to test all those headlines, copy versions and images and find the best ‘recipe’.
46. Create 2-3 pay-per-click ads on Google Adwords and/or Bing. Point those ads at the landing page. Be sure to use whatever tagging mechanism your analytics software requires, so you’ll know which ad generates which clicks.
47. Now start that test!
48. Pick the 3 things you learned from that test, and apply them to the rest of your site. Did one call to action work best? Create a button to put everywhere on the site. One type of photography? Use that, too. You get the idea.
49. Did conversion rates go up? Cool! Now make sure you’re earning a good return on those PPC ads. Increase your spend and broaden your campaign, always watching out for ROI.
50. Now you can create landing pages for all those house e-mails you’re sending out. Since you already know which subjects work best, and which kinds of offers, you can start with a good foundation and find the best possible landing page.
51. Grab your smartphone. Put it on a tripod. Film yourself talking about one of your products, or explaining how to use one of them. Post it on YouTube and then embed it on your site. No, you’re not Scorcese. But it’s more exposure for you, in another venue.
52. Do the same thing on Facebook.
53. Learn a web typography.
54. Learn psychographic targeting on Facebook and Twitter.
55. Take all the cool stuff you’ve learned by testing offers, and newsletters, and keywords, and ads, and landing pages, and revamp your site. Then announce your new, improved site to all your customers, and subscribers, and MySpace friends, etc..
56. Whew! You’re done. Congrats! Now, go back to step 1, and repeat the process. Because let’s face it: Digital marketing is never “done.”

I wrote a book about Technical SEO. More recently than 2008. Have a look.

The post The Digital Marketing List: 56 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t appeared first on Portent.

The most important skill for either a writer or a marketer is being empathic. A true writer needs to be able to write with empathy for any and all characters that exist in their world.

The same is true for marketers. Simply put, marketing is understanding your customer and providing effective content to get them to take action. Without really understanding your customer, you’re shooting in the dark and wasting marketing dollars. That’s where personas come in.

A marketing persona is a representation of your customer based on research and data that outlines behavior patterns, attitudes, goals and anything else that might inform you on how they engage with products and content. But as Stefanie Owens notes, “Personas in this space are, first and foremost, all about building empathy.”

If you’re reading this article, there’s a really good chance you’re familiar with personas already. But I’ve been shocked by the number of times we’ve asked clients for personas and they need to dig them up from the archives like some sort of lost artifact. It makes me doubt that they’ve been created effectively or are be used in any meaningful way.

In this article, I’m not going to explain why personas are useful or provide a guide on how to create them. My goal here is to give you some tips on how to make your personas better. Here 6 things that every screen-writer answers to create well defined characters that every marketer should copy to create kick-ass personas.

What time do they go to bed and wake up?

Screenplay example:
In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman works at an investment firm in Wall Street and happens to be a psychopath serial murderer by night. You’d think that’d tucker him out and he’d sleep in a bit, however, his need to be seen and revered by others causes him to go through an extensive early morning wake-up ritual full of grooming and exercise.

Why it’s important to a marketing persona:
Defining whether your customer is a night owl or early morning riser can have a lot of implications for not only when you provide marketing materials to them (ex: early morning eblast) but also where. Although it’s a traditional medium, infomercials still pull in a ton of dough – almost $250 billion dollars in 2015. What time is best for infomercials? Yup – night owl territory.

What is their routine when first getting to work?

Screenplay example:
In Stranger Things, Police Chief Hopper’s morning routine is to saunter in (often late) with a cigarette, trade insults with some of the other officers, grab coffee and a donut and postpone any police business until he has a chance to wake up. As he dismissively reminds his secretary, “Mornings are for coffee and contemplation.” This behavior perfectly illustrates him as apathetic and, as we eventually find out, emotionally damaged. This is the perfect starting point for an arc that leads to redemption and purpose.

Why it’s important to a marketing persona:
Email campaigns are tricky because of mobile devices. A higher percentage of people review their emails before work hours during a commute. However, there’s still a high percentage that cap their day with a giant email sweep.

On top of that, some customer types might be more likely to discard email promotions first thing in the morning, but be more responsive in the afternoon. Does your customer prefer to relax first thing in the morning or are they ready to make decisions and learn more about what you have to offer?

Are they set in their ways?

Screenplay example:
In Fight Club, the two main characters, The Narrator and Tyler Durden, are opposites when it comes to conformity. The Narrator’s need for order is at total odds with Tyler’s preference for chaos. The entire movie is about The Narrator’s slow slide into chaos and his transformation into liberation. As soon as he realizes he has gone too far, he pulls himself back to where he finds his strongest self.

Why it’s important to a marketing persona:
One of the most basic and important characteristics of your customer is where they sit on the technology adoption curve. Defining whether they’re an early adopter or laggard is crucial when deciding how to market to them.

Each of the groups on this curve has preset characteristics just like generational groups. You’re not going to want to run a marketing campaign that requires an Oculus Rift if your customer base are laggards. Nor will you want to run flash banners if your customers are innovators. Actually, don’t use flash. Just don’t.

Do they need a face or a name?

Screenplay example:
In Kill Bill: Volume 1, the main character’s name is never mentioned. In the screenplay, she is referred to as “The Bride.” Quentin Tarantino makes it a point to hide the name. In fact, during the movie, another character refers to her by name and it’s bleeped out. It’s never explained exactly why this is, but it’s most likely to help the viewer empathize with her. Tarantino wants us to not focus on her label, but understand who she is as a character and why she is intent on revenge.

Why it’s important to a marketing persona:
Although eventually having a great photo or name is effective for personalizing your persona, it should not drive the process. It’s critical to have a fully fleshed out written persona before slapping a name on it and providing imagery.

Stefanie Owens makes a compelling argument against using stock photos, cartoon-ish artwork, or useless demographic information in your personas. She provides this example of an excellent persona set that uses only relevant imagery and resists the urge to artificially put a face to a name:

Personas created by Virginia Honig, Hala Shih, Leila Johannesen and Caroline Law from IBM

What kind of environment do they need?

Screenplay example:
In As Good As It Gets, Melvin Udall is a neurotic novelist with a terrible case of O.C.D who hates any interaction with other people. Any sort of noise, including cracks in a sidewalk, totally disrupts his life and leads to stress.

His way of life is turned upside down when he’s forced to take care of his neighbor’s dog and deal with people that he’d never dreamed of holding a conversation with before. The storyline revolves around his fight to become “a better man.”

Why it’s important to a marketing persona:
Understanding how your customer reacts to different forms of exposure can change everything in marketing, from web design choices to the pacing of a nurture campaign. Likewise, if your touch points are too frequent in something like paid remarketing or any other nurture method, you can lose trust and may do more harm than good.

What do they fear?

Screenplay example:
In Jerry Maguire, Jerry is a high-rolling sports agent who resists all personal connection and gets self-worth only from his business accolades. The thought of losing any of his business relationships is devastating to him which is evident when we see the expression of shock on his face as he’s effortlessly fired. His (seemingly) worst fear comes to fruition, leading to his breakdown. But ultimately, he learns that his real fear is living and dying alone.

Why it’s important to a marketing persona:
I’ve put the question of “fear” last because it’s one that generally isn’t addressed with most personas. And yet, it’s potentially the most important question to answer when it comes to understanding what drives your customer.

I would argue that the nature of business is identifying fear (whether that’s fear of missing out on something wonderful, or actual avoidance of a negative outcome) and using that information to solve problems. In advertising for instance, that could be highlighting and accentuating a fear, only to follow it up with the end-all, be-all solution. In content marketing, it’s educating customers on the issues surrounding their fears and problems and providing them with the beginnings of a solution.

As an account manager, a large portion of my job is to hear KPI-based symptoms and translate that to understand a client’s underlying worry. Ultimately, it’s to address that fear with a clear solution in mind. Many times that may look different than what we were hired to do at a surface-level. The mark of a quality agency, and a quality marketer, is whether they can look beneath the observed symptoms and get at the more meaningful underlying issues that ultimately drive the plot.

There are many different ways to put together a potent marketing persona —a text heavy persona with minimal imagery, an infographic with mostly icons and figures, or even a video persona. The important thing is that, given all the data and research you’ve done, you become an empath and that your documented personas help to bring others into the same story.

The post 6 Ways to Build Blockbuster-worthy Marketing Personas appeared first on Portent.

Like it or not, you’re a content marketer: Content is your product. But no one notices it. No one consumes it. So you’re a frustrated content marketer (as am I).

What’s going on? There are plenty of interested people out there. You create good stuff. You have a distribution problem. You lack the network to distribute your product to the people who want it. So promoting it is like this:

Content marketing without a distribution network. Good luck with that.

How do you solve a distribution problem? Find those who own strong distribution networks and need your product to grow them. Find dealers.

Working with dealers, content promotion is more like this:

Content marketing with a dealer: Soo much easier

The best dealers are sites that grow through curation of material related to them:

• Content sharing networks, like SlideShare
• New and growing toolsets, like Piktochart
• Industry-specific, user-generated content sites and publications, like Moz or MarketingLand

Instead of beating your forehead flat against the brick wall that is Twitter (or Facebook, or LinkedIn), find great dealers. Love them. They’ve already chipped away at the wall. They’ll deliver your content to their audience for you, getting you the exposure you need. They are your dealers.

Some of my favorites:

Content sharing networks

I spend most of the rest of this article talking about content sharing networks. There’s a reason: These are the best dealers. These sites have built distribution networks. Their purpose in life is to host and distribute fantastic content. Their networks are well-maintained, and they’re very deliberate about promoting the best stuff.

They need your great content to keep those networks happy and growing. In other words: They need your products. You need their distribution. It’s a match made in heaven.

SlideShare

SlideShare is a huge library of presentations and presentation-style content.

Audience oomph: SlideShare always tweets and posts their favorite presentations. They share with their 232,000 Twitter followers and over 400,000 Facebook friends. And their own site is a social network in itself. Hundreds of thousands of SlideShare users search for great content every day.

Why I like it:

• Home page placement isn’t purely vote driven. While lots of views certainly help, SlideShare editors feature their favorite content, so the site avoids the popularity contest you sometimes see on other sites.
• They support embedded content. You can embed any presentations you upload on your own site. I’ve had featured presentations get 100,000+ views. 20% of those views came via the embedded slideshows on the Portent site. Onsite visitors promoted using a huge content distribution network? Sign me up.
• You can generate leads using their built-in lead forms: Place a mandatory or optional lead generation form at the start of your presentation, in the middle or at the end.

SlideShare needs great content, day-in and day-out. They need a great product. Without it, they’re an empty storefront. If you create presentation-style content, SlideShare is your perfect dealer.

Tip. Convert your presentations to Acrobat PDF before you upload. Otherwise, any non-standard fonts you use may turn to gobbledygook.

LinkedIn Pulse

I have to be honest: I’m ambivalent about LinkedIn Pulse. There’s a lot of verbal vomit on there. On the other hand: LinkedIn. Larry Kim uses Pulse as well as anyone out there. Have a look at his work.

Audience oomph: It’s LinkedIn. If you can get into the LinkedIn Pulse—that’s the LinkedIn feed for Pulse (confusing, I know)—you end up in front of about 200 million users give or take.

Why I like it:

• Publishing is very straightforward. There’s no expectation around content length. Alas, there doesn’t appear to be any standards, either.
• You can leverage your LinkedIn networks to get views.

Like I said: Ambivalent.

Tip: Keep at it. LinkedIn favors persistence. The more good stuff you publish, the more people like/view your content. That seems to increase attention, getting you more likes/views, and so on. LinkedIn is more of a popularity contest, but it’s one where you have a chance.

By the way: It’s not obvious where you go to write for Pulse:

On LinkedIn, this means 'Write for Pulse'

Medium

It’s hard to classify Medium by type of content, but they’re definitely a great network. Authors publish long-form-ish content across a dizzying array of topics, from marketing to LGBTQ issues to football.

Audience oomph: Medium has a mind-boggling 1.6 million Twitter followers and 145 thousand Facebook friends. Your chances of a social share are small, but still better than getting a direct ‘home run’ on a major social network, and the upside is huge. Like SlideShare, they have a big internal network. I published a story, told colleagues and friends about it and got 900+ reads (not views – full reads) in two months, generating 8,800 visits to eigene-homepage-erstellen.net. That’s higher than my average on the Portent blog.

Why I like it:

• Medium is first and foremost a writing tool, not a marketing tool. They make it easy to create some really nice-looking pieces. Anything you publish and share will be easy for your audience to consume.
• The site allows highlighting and paragraph-by-paragraph commenting. That ups user involvement.
• Readers can recommend content, thereby boosting it within the Medium network.
• You can designate other Medium collaborators. Not really a marketing thing, but I like the ability to give credit to those who help you write.

Tip. Get your pieces edited before you publish. Polish is always important, but it will take you far on Medium.

Bonus tip. Tag carefully. This site’s all about categorization. Aiming for the ‘biggest’ category isn’t always the best idea.

More options

Content sharing networks aren’t your only option. Yes, they’re great. But some of the other dealers offer huge opportunities. Don’t ignore them:

Emerging tools

Always look for companies that are trying to gain a foothold for their tools. These companies often build content sharing networks to distribute the great stuff their users create. They have a very strong incentive to distribute your work—it may be the best way to grow their user base. Plus, you get to play with all manner of cool new toys.

Haiku Deck is an online toolset for creating gorgeous slide decks. Far easier than Powerpoint and usually with better results. They aren’t that new in Internet terms, but they’re definitely growing. They have an onsite gallery and feature the best slide decks. They also respond in social media and clearly understand the product-dealer virtuous cycle-upward-funnel-good-news-thingie.

Piktochart is a slick design tool great for creating infographics and presentations. They publish their favorites at magic.piktochart.com. They also write blog posts and tweet about stuff they like.

Tip: Support the dealer. When you post about a new piece you published on a content sharing network, don’t just link to it. Mention the content sharing site where it’s located. They’ll appreciate it, and you’re repaying their help distributing your content.

Industry-specific sites

Look at industry specific sites and publications, too. In marketing, for example, write something great for MarketingLand, Moz or another site, they’ll distribute it to gigantic audiences.

If you shrug and say “Yeah, that’s only for marketing,” you’re missing out. Whatever your industry, there will be sites looking for great content.

Tip: Find sites using Google. Search for [TOPIC] “submit a story” and [TOPIC] [TOPIC] “contribute”.

Bonus tip: Don’t spam. If you build a list of sites and start submitting everything you write to every site on that list, you’ll get yourself in trouble. See Not Crap, below.

Not crap

Be aware that your results depend on quality. Dealers need good products. If you provide them with lousy content, one of three things will happen:

1. They’ll stop accepting your work
2. They’ll continue accepting it, but stop promoting it
3. They’ll promote it, thereby publicizing your ability to produce crap

There’s another, even bigger downside to spamming dealers: You’ll create copyright and ownership issues. Some of these sites want exclusivity. They’ll be pretty unhappy if they see your article pop up on multiple sites.

Continuously build your dealer network

By the way: At some point, you’ll be tempted to dump the dealers and distribute 100% of your content ‘direct.’ I don’t recommend it.

Definitely transition more content to direct. The benefits are clear: Better brand recognition, links, direct social shares, etc.

But you’ll still need those content sharing sites to amplify and re-amplify your content. The more successful you get, the more sharing sites pay attention to your content. They’ll offer better distribution deals because they want your stuff. You can still help each other.

Your content is a product. Work to make it great. Then build and maintain a healthy dealer network. It pays off.

A quick note: You may notice I use the phrase ‘content marketing’ in this post. I surrender. The term makes me cringe, but after five years of fighting it, I beg for mercy. I’m jumping on the bandwagon with as little sarcasm as possible. Please support my cowardice by not saying anything.

The post Need to Crush Content Promotion? Love Your Dealers appeared first on Portent.

But, alas, the point of this article is not to talk about what companies do right (what’s the fun and shame in that?). I am here to highlight some of the biggest fails, flops, and social media disasters that have resulted in adverse consequences, even for some very big names.

While it would be entertaining to simply point and laugh at these poor, unfortunate social souls, I want to take their less-than-successful attempts and identify why they didn’t work and what they could (should) have done.

Example 1: Epic Tweet Fail

Now, while I am a social media professional, I’m pretty humble:  I don’t claim to be an “expert.” This fact, however, further proves my point ­­– it does not take an “expert” to spot the “what not to do.”

Let’s take the Justine Sacco case as an example. Needless to say, this PR exec (yep, you heard me…her entire job is telling other people how NOT to do things like this) was fired before her plane landed in South Africa.

Twitter is real, folks. Other people can and will see what you write and it will get retweeted. This is typically the goal and what people strive to achieve: the ever elusive retweet. Be especially mindful of this when you represent a company. In this case, getting noticed by Buzzfeed is what shot her now infamous tweet to stardom.

While there is no light to shed on this situation or any possible improvements that can be made (other than don’t say heartless, racist things), there is somewhat of a silver lining to this thoughtless incident. The clichéd expression “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure” applies to this situation, as one savvy interwebber set www.justinesacco.com to redirect to the non-profit group, www.aidforafrica.org. As a result, the group has seen an impressive increase in donations, jumping to 3/hour as opposed to 3/day. Sorry, Justine, your handiwork was a lose/lose for you but a win/win for good Samaritans and people trying to make the social world a better place.

Example 2: #EpicHashtagFail

Hashtags are an ideal way to group Tweets and track discussion topics through keywords. They are integral to success on Twitter, and have recently been adopted by Facebook and Google+ as well. You can now unify cross-network promotions and prompt participation from multiple networks to improve reach and shares. They are intended to drive conversation and connect people with similar interests. Sounds great, right? What could possibly go wrong?

With great hashtags comes great responsibility. You must think through all of the implications of using a hashtag campaign and consider all of the possibilities and ways that it can fail before implimentation. Your hashtag must have context and add value for your followers. Failure to consider these will surely lead your hashtag to fade away into the Twitterverse and be forgotten faster than DrawSomething (yeah, remember that great app?). Or worse, it may lead to a PR nightmare as exemplified by McDonald’s.

Although potentially one of the most notorious hashtag marketing fails, McDonalds’ #McDStories campaign taught us all an invaluable Twitter lesson. Last January, McDonald’s launched their campaign with the comically vague #McDStories. They intended to receive stories of people’s favorite foods or how much their children love Happy Meals. What they got was, in fact, the opposite. People hijacked the hashtag and applied it to McDonalds horror stories.

McDonald’s ended up pulling the campaign within two hours of launching it. That didn’t stop the people from continuing to post with the branded hashtag.

The company did the right thing by simply ending their campaign early and not responding negatively to their Twitter trolls. Instead, they took responsibility for their mistake (communicated via Twitter, of course) and owned up to realizing that they should have been more thorough in their consideration of the hashtag.

McDonald’s lesson on vague hashtag campaigns can be considered a cautionary tale for us all. Be sure to really think a hashtag through before launching it. If considering a branded campaign, realize the potential it has to go viral and what that can and will do for your company, both good and bad: and accept that once you launch the campaign, the audience controls it – not your brand.

Example 3: Epic Facebook Meltdown

Our social bff, Facebook, is capable of creating a strong presence for a brand or business within the social realm. With photos and posts clearly visible on the profile page, people often look to Facebook when researching a company. That is why it is absolutely crucial to remain positive and supportive of your followers, and not attack them when they may leave a less-than-ideal review.

The prime example of a company not following through on this key objective can be found in the complete meltdown of Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro. After receiving bad reviews following the airing of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares (in which the owners were dropped by Ramsey after being “too difficult to work with”) the two owners took to Facebook to “defend” themselves and their restaurant. Now, I am not saying that explaining your company’s practice on Facebook is always a bad idea, but it is ALWAYS a bad idea to fire back at your followers with nasty, hateful comments (a lot of which don’t even make logical or grammatical sense).

Facebook should be a platform on which your brand can address issues raised by the public, but done so respectfully. The inevitable happened for Amy’s Bistro: they lost A LOT of social followers as well as previously faithful fans of the restaurant itself. There is no quicker way to ruin your company’s name than to fail to take responsibility for your actions, and then top it off by placing blame on your fans and followers.

Clearly, the lesson learned is to keep your cool when responding to negative feedback. It does not make sense to fight fire with fire, but instead to try and come to a reasonable solution, or at the very least be respectful.

The Takeaway

Social media, while relatively new, holds a lot of power in the marketing world. It has the ability to make or, as we have now seen, break a brand. When a brand abuses the power of social media, it more often than not comes back to bite them. So please, let these epic fails show you what NOT to do and try not to learn from experience. Use good judgment when posting and always ask for at least a second opinion. And don’t ever be embarrassed to ask for help. Social media is a new field, and the only constant is change. Building a list of trusted resources you can call for help is critical.

The post How Not to be an #EPIC Social Media Fail appeared first on Portent.

It ended up being a top-to-bottom guide on how we do content strategies at Portent. We put it into a custom format so it’s easier to read:

Read it: [How to: Create a Content Strategy in Only 652 Steps ]

I look forward to your adulation/catcalls…

The post The Humungous Guide to Content Strategy appeared first on Portent.

For a highly visual medium, the Internet has been slow to attract marketers with a graphic bent.  Perhaps due to proliferation of search engine optimization, or web browsers originating as text-based applications, many of us have focused on the word, not the image, video, or application.

But words aren’t attracting the attention they used to.  There are just too many of them.  So as marketers, we need to look to new content methods for garnering attention, branding our message, and engaging meaningfully with our target audience.

At Portent, we like to make things, experiment, and philosophize.  And under the “make things” and “experiment” categories falls our newest effort, the Kitten Moodinator – an app that allows a user to answer a simple question which leads to a “predictive mood.”  In turn, this predictive mood appears as a very cute kitten picture:

The idea originated from my ex-mother-in-law’s frequent Facebook “mood” posts.  “Anne is 70% happy today,” “Anne is 30% happy today.”  I thought, what better way to communicate a mood – be it good or bad – than with an amazingly adorable kitten?

But ultimately, the Internet is full of kittens.  Why would we invest time and energy into something that we’re not making any cash off of?  …Which leads to another question: why does anyone invest in content at all?  It’s not measurable like PPC or quantifiable like CRO – it doesn’t have SEO’s trackability.

In fact, unless you charge for it, there is no direct correlation between content and revenue at all.

And yet, it’s what makes your business successful.  People buy what they know about.  People buy what they like.  And unless you’re prepared to go door-to-door hocking your wares, that means content.

So I gathered our internal teams – content, design, development, social and paid search – and we set out to make something fun.  It wasn’t the worst work on earth, that’s for sure.  We chose Facebook for its sharability, hoping (of course) for virality.

But, as Portent’s president says, “so what?”  So the Moodinator goes viral – what does that achieve?

Our internal goals for the Kitten Moodinator are three-fold:

1. Attention

Most messages on today’s Internet are the equivalent of yelling in Lambeau Field.  Whether selling steak knives or online marketing services, getting the attention of an audience is daunting at best, impossible at worst.  This is why words are often not enough – at least not on their own.

The competition loosens up a bit, however, as content shifts away from the written and more toward the visual.  Not only are fewer firms doing it, a user can more quickly and easily digest images.  And who can resist a catchy, cute kitten photo?

So before the Kitten Moodinator can accomplish the two goals below, it needs to capture audience interest.

2. Engagement

On some level, all content is ‘engaging,’ even if the audience is merely reading.  But the best kind of engagement involves a back-and-forth.  The user takes action.  There is a response to that initial action that invites them to take subsequent action.  These exchanges are the best way of building the engagement, and ultimately, the buy-in of your audience.

And once you have that, you’re able to establish your…

3. Brand

This is our greatest goal with the Moodinator – to likably convey our expertise in content creation and social media strategy while differentiating ourselves from the competition.

Along with basic product or service messaging, branding is the major goal of content – it’s where you separate and elevate yourself in the minds of your core audience.  It’s why, all things being equal, they choose your offering over your competition’s.

How we’ll (attempt to) measure success

What does success look like to us?  As noted above, there is no calculable monetary ROI for the Kitten Moodinator (absent some future client stating ‘the only reason I’m hiring you is the Kitten Moodinator’).

Consequently, the metrics we’ll be looking at to evaluate success are:

• Social referral traffic, reach, shares, and engagement
• Repeat interactions
• Page views on eigene-homepage-erstellen.net
• Links
• Press coverage and “buzz”
• Client reaction now and in the future
• An expanded knowledge base in-house, allowing us to better serve current and future clients

Will it work?  We think so, but time will tell.

And for now, as the great Jay-Z says, on to the next one, on to the next one.

Have you used the Kitten Moodinator?  If so, let us know in the comments. 

The post Portent’s Kitten Moodinator: When Content Isn’t Words appeared first on Portent.

You may not know this yet, but there is a limit to how many of your fellow tweeters you can follow. I found out the hard way.

As a writer, I am a good observer. So when I joined Twitter, I watched how other writers handled their accounts. Writers follow (and are followed by) each other in droves. Some paranormal e-book authors follow 60,000 or more people. I began aggressively following other writers and literati thinking there was no limit to the inspiration available.

I was wrong.

“ Twitter limits following behavior [because] these limits help us improve site performance and reliability and help us make Twitter a nice place for everyone.” —Twitter

Aggressive is a bad word for Twitter. They use the word 4 times (out of 456 words) on their Following Rules and Best Practices Page. And never in a good way.

But when I say I follow other writers aggressively, I mean actively. I’ve sought out people with shared interests. A lot of them. Since June, I’ve followed 2,000 people I wanted to learn more about. And therein lies the problem. Twitter says I can’t follow anyone else until I have more followers. Here’s why that doesn’t make Twitter a nicer place for me.

I believe in the limits of my own importance

Being merely one human out of nearly 7,000,000,000 on this planet, I expect to notice more people than notice me. I think it’s weird when people have nearly the same number of followers as following—as if they are in a followback loop where they only want to know about people who like them first.

I currently follow three times as many people as follow me. I don’t think that’s because I’m boring. It’s because I like listening more than talking. Plus my following list covers many different topics and those tweeps may not share my interests.

Here’s who I follow and why:

• Marketers like SEO Chicks give me tips to do my day job better. Foreign marketers like Why Not Blue refresh my language skills while teaching me about SEO Montreal-style.
• A Dangerous Business and other travel bloggers fuel my dreams of someday using those language skills again.
• I learn about the publishing industry from agents, publishers, reviewers, and lit zines. I like being reminded of the people behind the good work at places like Melville House and Dalkey Archive.
• Other writers share my struggles and triumphs. Tweeting to Sarah Martinez about how much I enjoyed her book launch is a “thanks for the invite” and good promo for her.
• Visual artists and musicians offer different looks at creativity. BOMB Magazine posts archive interviews that hit all the right notes.
• Popular blogs like Huffington Post make sure I’m not totally clueless on the happenings of the world.
• Washington State DOT, Seattle Police, and local media give me the news I need right now.
• My friends and I support and promote each other in Twitter and real life. Ann Hedreen, Liza Wolff-Francis, Icess Fernandez, and Kim Brown all keep me grounded.

Most of those people will never follow me back. I don’t expect them to. But to get to follower/following parity which Twitter seems to want, I need a wide variety of strangers to follow me that I don’t plan to follow back. That just isn’t me…

I believe in community

I follow back. Not indiscriminately, but if you want to take time to get to know me, I’d like to get to know you too. We can do that on Facebook, but unfortunately you’ll have to make the first move on Twitter (and wait until I hit some magical unpublished ratio—PR and the Social Web says the magic formula is number of followers plus 10%—that means I can follow you back).

Although our day to day importance in each other’s lives may be small, I’m still glad to connect. The world is a lonely place without connections.

I believe in serendipity

Twitter is like Penn Station at rush hour. Somewhere in the cacophony is a voice telling an interesting story (a lot of them really), and I believe that Fate (and a little judgment on my part) will point me in the direction of the information and inspiration I crave. These “random” interactions prevent creative stagnation.

I believe in you

I don’t dump people I follow without good reason. Three or four tweets about how no one likes you or how you are the only important person in the word will get you dumped. And I block spammers. But mostly you’ll find me a pretty open and generous audience. Which means it’s nearly impossible to winnow down my following list so I can follow new people.

What do I do now?

Can I get around this follower limit? Yes. I could start dumping people I don’t LOVE (but I won’t). Or I could build lists of people I am interested in but don’t follow and then set up a stream in HootSuite, but why should I have to? Why should it be so difficult?

”If you’ve reached the account-based follow limit (2,000 users), you’ll need to wait until you yourself have more followers before you can follow additional users.” —Twitter

I can accept that I have to sit out following for a while (not that I have any choice). But it annoys the crap out of me that I can’t take an active aggressive role in building my Twitter feed. So, Destiny…will I get more followers or is everything I need already in my feed?

Are you wildly inspired by too many tweeps? How do you handle your follower/following ratio?

The post Why I Hate the Twitter Follow Limit appeared first on Portent.

Aren't they awesome?

First off, I’m a cat person. I want to make that perfectly clear. It’s a high honor if I compare you to a cat. So saying a marketing agency’s clients are like cats is very favorable.

In Portent’s proposals I compare my employees to rats. So really, clients are coming out way ahead.

A quick introduction

We have two cats in the Lurie household right now: Romulus and Isis. They’re siblings—did you know that cats in a single litter can have different fathers? Neither did I, until we got a brother and sister that were black and Siamese.

So, 4 ways clients are like cats:

1: They’re great to have around.

My cats keep me sane. In spite of my occasional blog posts, my clients do, too. Seriously. I’m not kidding.

Oh, and clients pay you. Which is really great. It helps you buy food and stuff.

2: It’s all about them

And that’s how it should be. Cats are completely devoted to one thing: Themselves. So are clients, and that is perfectly appropriate.

Right now, as I write this, Isis (the female feline) is pawing at me, trying to get into my lap while imploringly looking at me: “Daddy, why no lap?” I have a keyboard in my lap, Isis. She doesn’t care. She wants lappage. Right now.

Clients don’t care either. They’re paying you to get results. That’s what they should get. I’ve certainly asked for extensions/tolerance from clients when Something Bad is going on at Portent, and they’re always sympathetic. But assume your clients are completely devoted to one thing: Themselves. Their success. Their growth. Because they should be.

3: You may occasionally want to throw them in the trash bin

Cats may decide to race around the house at 3 AM, knock stuff over (they are not all feline grace) and occasionally do unspeakable things in the litter box. I resist the urge to:

1. Shave them
2. Stick their tails in light sockets
3. Feed them spiked Friskies
4. Have them stuffed

…because no relationship is perfect. You need to take the good with the bad, because they do the same. My cats put up with my often-violent sleep cycles (I’ve been known to pedal in my sleep), lackadaisical litter-box sanitation and bizarre sense of humor. It all works out.

You and your clients will have good and bad days: A missed deadline, a late payment. A day when someone’s grumpy as hell for no clear reason. It happens. Talk it out. Be patient with each other and it’s amazing how, 24 hours later, what seemed like the end of the world was a minor bump in the road.

4: Sometimes, you have to piss them off

My cats always try to nab a quick drink of my Diet Coke. I’m pretty sure that’d be really bad for them, so I shoo them away with a sharp word or two. I also have to do things like trim their claws, and sometimes force them to take pills for one affliction or another. They do not appreciate it. They get royally ticked off, growl at me and sometimes even shun me for a whole hour.

But the end result is a healthier, happier cat. Which means more lappage for me, and better sanity maintenance. So it pays off.

If you’re so terrified of making a client unhappy that you never say ‘no’, or push back to prevent what you think will be a mistake, then you’re not doing your job. Clients don’t hire you to make them happy—happiness is a nice side effect when things go right. Clients hire you to help them grow through application of your expertise. So apply it, even if that means ruffling a feather or two.

OK, they’re not cats

Cats are a lot more predictable than clients. And, unlike cats, they can talk to you, and you can talk to them. And they don’t write you checks. So clients aren’t exactly like cats. But they’re both looking to you for their welfare. They are your responsibility. Be responsible.

The post 4 ways clients are like cats appeared first on Portent.

So, I’ll go over real-life advice for building links, including some fairly geeky stuff, like:

• Log file analysis
• Using Google Webmaster Tools to find juicy broken links
• Stuff you shouldn’t do

A good time will be had by all! Sign up here

The post Tomorrow’s free webinar: “Advanced” link building appeared first on Portent.

It’s a lot harder to impart knowledge than to pass information. But it’s also worth it, because knowledge sticks.

Why does application teach better than rote memorization? Hmmm let’s think. Oh yeah—because application creates knowledge, which quickly remaps neural pathways. Memorization sends us into an information-overload daze, which leads to sad, lonely little neurons. If you’re teaching others it’s a lot more work to put together a lesson plan that delivers knowledge: You have to create examples and build your teaching around them. Transferring information is a heck of a lot easier: All you have to do is hand over a textbook and say “Read this 10 times. Quiz on Friday.”

This may be why I like Montessori so much. My kids have both been in a Montessori-style school for years. They’re already smarter than me.

Some examples:

The New York Times could hire cheaper writers, or republish Associated Press wires. That’d be easier. But they don’t. And their billing model is so successful that they’ve tightened down their ‘preview wall’ to 10, instead of 20 articles. They’re selling knowledge, in the form of fantastic writing & analysis by their journalists.

The music industry doesn’t understand that fans feel music is information. The right thing to do, if you’re a recording executive, is to convince folks music is knowledge. Which it is. The wrong thing to do? Sue the people who pay your bills.

News of the World recorded phone calls. Financial institutions have been pretty naughty. That’s because ‘ethics’ aren’t information. They’re knowledge. You have to live ethics in your corporate culture, every day. It’s really hard work.

OK, that sounds totally wrong. I don’t mean that I’m naturally evil, and therefore find it incredibly hard to behave myself on a daily basis. I mean that reinforcing good behavior across an entire company requires a lot of attention.

Anyway: Someone decided to reduce ethics to a list of rules (information) in an employee manual somewhere, because that was easier. Clearly, they stopped turning that information into knowledge. Foomp. Ethical implosion.

Where did this come from?

On Thursday I wrote that Information is free, and Knowledge is not. It’s an idea that’s embedded itself pretty deeply in my cerebrum. It’s not coming out.

Soooo, I decided to test the whole theory against current events, and a little life experience. That’s this post.

Let me know if you have your own examples that fit, or don’t fit, this whole hypothesis.

The post Information vs. Knowledge, Part 2 appeared first on Portent.