Anyone Else Sick of ‘Engagement’ Yet?

engagement in action

What does ‘engagement’ mean to you? The word used to mean bethrotal and would hopefully end in marriage. A prior engagment means you’re busy and we’ve all been engaged in a conversation, some of us even in battle. In Britain, your telephone line can be engaged – even your lavatory can be engaged. These types of enagement have been around for a long old time but the use of the word engagement has been hijacked by a very strong force…. Social media.

Any social media ‘guru’ will tell you that success online is only about one thing – engagement. Not sure how many blog posts I have read from ‘experts’ that outline a situation with a company which seems to be doing ok, they have a fancy social media presence but for some reason there is a lack of interaction with users. The ‘expert’ then comes up with the insightful advice of engaging with the community and everyone reading the post leaves a comment agreeing.

That was great back in 2009 but by now you would think any comms or PR person working with social media would understand to the need to communicate with people. Sometimes companies get this wrong but I think it has more to do with the corporate culture than anything else. If a company puts you on hold on the phone for 30 minutes, if they rarely respond to letters, you can probably expect their Twitter response time to be rather slow. Any advice on social media engagement is not going to change the behavior of this organisation overnight.

In case you haven’t noticed, we have all been so engaged nowadays online that even the multi-author blog Social Media Today has its own category for Engagement on their blog. I for one never felt tempted to check out that section – did you? Perhaps it’s just the term I’m sick of. It just feels very dated and like something everyone has to say instead of something innovative, creative or even original.

Are you engaged or disengaged? Let me know your thoughts….

Related: How NOT to Pitch Bloggers with Your Products and Services

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , ,

How To Use Slideshare for Your Content Marketing [10 Tips]

slideshare social media

Ever heard of SlideShare? It’s a site that hosts your slide decks from Powerpoint or Keynote. It’s one of those great content marketing platforms most people have never heard of.

Some impressive stats first of all: SlideShare is one of the top 150 sites on the web, they get 60 million visitors per month and have 3 billion slide views a month (that’s 1,140 slides viewed per second). So the traffic is good but it’s also the right type of traffic for most content marketers – it’s highly professional. According to ComScore, SlideShare has five times more traffic from business owners than other popular websites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

I won’t delve further into why it’s a useful tool, instead I’d like to give you ten ways to use it successfully:

1. Use existing content

Chances are that you will have a number of Powerpoint presentations kicking about on your hard drive. What company doesn’t have a sales presentation? An employer branding piece? A few slides about a recent product launch? As long as they don’t contain any confidential information, go ahead and upload these to SlideShare and you immediately have content. You can of course change them before you upload, you might want to change images, update figures or cut out a few slides in the deck.

2. Keep it simple

When I upload a presentation to SlideShare, I’ll typically take out about half the slides. I’ll leave the visually interesting and self-explanatory ones, as the viewer won’t hear me talk about the content. Nobody wants to sit through a 70-slide deck in an auditorium and nobody wants to see even half than that online so keep it simple instead and get your message across in a brief manner. Some of the best presentations I’ve seen are only about 10 slides long and contain very few words.

3. Be sure to add clickable links

I only realised that you can add hyperlinks to a SlideShare deck a few months ago. This means that you can add a link to your website or Twitter on the front page and last page, in case anyone loves your presentation you want to make it easy for them to contact you of course. When I put slides up about LinkedIn for instance, I of course link that to our LinkedIn training workshops in London.

4. Use the right keywords for SEO

SlideShare has an internal search engine where visitors pull searches every day, most of these will be researchers out on a fact-finding mission. On top of that the content also ranks really well in external searche engines like Google and Bing, use this to your advantage. Just like a YouTube video, it’s important to use the right title, description and tags in order for it to be found online. Instead of calling your presentation “Annual Parks Report”, try “London Parks Facts and Figures by Borough and Councils” – the latter one is full of keywords that people will use to searches.

5. Embed here and there

A great feature with SlideShare is the fact that you can embed your presentations on websites, blog posts or anywhere else you can think of. This mean anyone can host your presentation on their blog but with a link back to your SlideShare account. This can work really well when writing a blog post about a topic, you add more weight to your argument with a presentation embedded.

In fact, I write a quick blog post around every most public presentations I give, an example is How To Build Your Personal Brand on Social Media [Slides].

6. Link up to LinkedIn

LinkedIn offers its users very few cool applications but the SlideShare integration is one of them. By adding the SlideShare app on LinkedIn, you can automatically display your most recent presentation on your LinkedIn profile. Or you can set it to whichever presentation you feel represents you the best, you can even show two decks on your profile. Everytime you upload a new presentation to SlideShare, it updates your profile and it sends out a notification to your network’s homefeed indicating there’s new content to have a look at on your profile.

7. SlideShare surprise

My party trick when speaking at a conference is to upload my deck to SlideShare early in the morning. I then schedule a tweet linking to the presentation to go out when I should be up on the podium speaking (using the event hashtag of course). When I do speak I mention something like “right about now a tweet is going out linking to this presentation by the way”. This has generated thousands of views of my presentations from all around the world.

8. Check the stats of your presentations

By having a look at how many views, comments and shares your presentations get you’ll get an idea for what people out there are interested in. And perhaps what they aren’t interested in. Just like with any content marketing strategy, it’s about monitoring what works and try to do more of just that. You’ll get even more interesting stats if you upgrade…

9. Go pro if you want leads

OK if you are really serious about your presentations and feel that they will lead to solid business, you can upgrade your account. This will then give you analytics of who’s viewing your decks and SlideShare will present you with up to 30 leads per month. You can get your own branding on your account and you can do private uploads as well. My rule of thumb is as with all freemium models, only go pro when you’ve mastered the basics.

10. Check out other people’s decks for inspiration

Finally, you’ll probably get into the whole presentation thing now after realising what SlideShare can do for you. This raises the bar and you now want to make even greater decks for yor audience. If you find yourself stuck for what to put on your next slide, fear not. Have a look at similar presentations on SlideShare to get ideas from your peers. Or check out the ‘Most Popular Today‘ section on the site, this is where some of the best presentations in the world are featured. Pick and mix your ideas and transform it into your content.

Any more ideas around SlideShare? Please let me know in the comments!

Related post by Kris Olin: How To Get Crazy Traffic Using SlideShare and LinkedIn

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Marketing, Slides Tagged With: , ,

How Pinterest, Quora, About.me and Twylah Won’t Solve Your Marketing Problems

Another Tools Is Not the Answer

Ever heard of Pinterest, Quora, About.me and Twylah? You may have signed up for one or two of these and you might even have used them. There are about another gazillion more tech start-ups with ‘cool’ names and flashy websites out there, all offering to be the solution to your social media marketing challenges.

Today I’d like to share my thoughts on new technology. I speak from first hand experience here and I hope you won’t make some of the time consuming mistakes I have seen happening with companies.

New social media tools are very cool indeed

It’s amazing how many new tools are released in the world of social media. Almost every day Mashable and/or TechCrunch (do have a look at these links) treat us to yet another piece of software that is gunning to be the next big thing. Whether it's an app that helps you to do Facebook better, or to keep track of your Twitter followers or even a standalone tool that integrates with other networks, they all get lots of airtime when launched. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact new tools drive the market forward and challenges the established players. The difficult bit is really sifting out what can really be useful for your marketing campaign and what will be an absolute time waste – very hard to say before testing of course.

Everyone loves to test a new tool

Most people are very quick to sign up and start testing whatever new tool that comes out. They believe this one will help solve their marketing problems or the mindset internally about using social media. There can of course be certain benefits to new technology but the rate at which new tools are released make it difficult to keep up. I hate to say this but another tool is not going to change anything about your business, it’s only going to add to the work load and take your eye off what’s really important. People tend to get bogged down in tactics and forgetting the bigger picture.

So what’s really important?

Your strategy is what really matters. Your purpose matters, what you are trying to achieve and the results you want to get. Do a proper job of your marketing first, social media efforts second and stick to your strategy instead of getting side tracked. Once you know exactly what you want to achieve and can define that in qualitative and quantitative metrics, it's simply a matter of reverse engineering the way forward. Tools and technology should be the last thing to consider in my opinion.

How balance strategy and tactics?

The best way to achieve success with social media is to do proper research first, then agree on a comprehensive strategy, then stick to this for the next three months before re-evaluating and start throwing new pieces of technology into the mix. Yes, keep an eye out for new ideas such as tools that can help your efforts but don’t let these get in the way of the job in hand.

Let other companies and people test tools and report back to you via blogs and other channels. If something looks very promising, do a proper test session and be sure to evaluate the cost/benefits ratio.

Bottom line

Keep cool and stay focused in the world of social media, new shiny tools will come out every day and can distract you immensely. Learn by others successes or mistakes, just like any other business would do. Another tool is not the answer, believe me.

What do you think, am I the real tool here?

More strategy fun at What's Your Company's Social Media Strategy?

Image credit Denise Carbonell

Filed Under: Marketing, Monthly Tagged With: , ,

Social Media Marketing for Gluten Free Delices at Apero Entrepreneurs

Last night I was invited to Apero Entrepreneurs which is an Anglo-French networking group for aspiring entrepreneurs in London, affiliated with the French Chamber of Commerce. I held a series of short 1-2-1 coaching sessions on my favourite topic of social media.

Apero Entrepreneurs basically offer their members the chance to speak to an 'expert' in a chosen field at their monthly meetups and this time the turn had come to social networking and for the Swedish non-French speaker (that would be me) to help out as best possible.

I had five 'patients' at my surgery last night, the one I wanted to mention is Christelle who runs a small business making gluten-free cakes, the company is called Gluten Free Delices. She is operating on a tight budget and is already doing a few things on social media which was a great start. Her objectives are to get more customers (B2C and B2B), increase brand awareness and build up an online community of fans. And yes you guessed it, some of the cakes are featured at the top of this post.

Christelle has a website and a blog, on top of that she has a Facebook Page and a Twitter presence. Reviewing what she is doing currently, I came up with a few ideas.

First off, she is very fortunate in that she makes something that's visual. Unlike strategy consulting, cakes are perfect for pictures and videos – the stuff that people love to see on Facebook. Second, she works with varied customers around London and sees many offices and people. This is perfect for storytelling on her blog and Facebook page, along with pictures again. Third, she has a market stall at Kingston Market every last Sunday of the month. This market has a Twitter hashtag that she can use, as well as jumping onto other hashtags that are relevant for gluten-free foods around the world.

Somebody asked me what the most important part to a successful social media marketin strategy is. My answer was 'creativity'. If you look at the most succesful campaigns in any type of marketing they are typically very original and different to the competition. The good news is that a tiny company like Gluten Free Delices can be very effective on social networks as it only takes an investment in time, not money. So a bakery with 10,000 employees might have one community manager, not necessarily better than what one person can in their micro-business. By doing something differen and telling human stories I believe social media is just the ticket for small companies.

Recommendations for Gluten Free Delices

  • Create content on the blog, tell stories of products (the cakes), who they are being delivered to, what type of customers buy them and anything else that seems like a story worth telling. By creating fresh content on the blog, Google will rank the site better and it gives visitors a reason to come back.
  • When people are on the site and/or blog, ask them to opt-in to a newsletter offering an ethical bribe in the shape of a cake recipe or 'Top 10 tips'. This will build up a list of prospects interested in gluten-free cakes.
  • Share the content from the blog to Facebook and Twitter, not just broadcasting but also asking additional questions that work on those platforms. The more engagement on these both platforms, the more likelihood that friends of followers will see the activity.
  • Run promotions on the Facebook page, perhaps asking customers from Kingston market to take a photo of when they are munching away a their cakes and upload it to the page. Whoever does this gets a free cake next time, or they get 10% off their next order.
  • Another good way of getting brand awareness and promotion is to contact food bloggers. Most bloggers are very happy to receive free products in return for writing up a review. Target the top 20 food bloggers (or even cake bloggers if they exist) in the London region and don't give up until everyone has been sent their cakes.
  • Finally, LinkedIn can also be useful for targeting B2B (business-to-business) buyers. By using the advanced search function on LinkedIn, it's possible to find the people who are responsible for catering within large organisations.

More ideas welcome

Those were my ideas in our 15-minute session, if you can think of any others please let me and Christelle know. I will of course keep you updated on her progress here on the blog. 

More on business blogging at 7 Reasons Your Company Should Write a Blog.

Filed Under: Marketing, Monthly, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

How Emails are Still the Killer App of the Internet

Do you remember sending your first email? It was a pretty cool feeling. I am sure you remember receiving your first email as well, an even better feeling. Emails were one of the keys to the success of the internet I would say. Some providers tried to charge their customers for every email sent but in the end it became completely free and it's heavily reduced our reliance on sending post (or snail mail if you will). So far so good, for a while (well 10 years or so) email marketing was the future of the web and building an email list of subscribers was a top priority for savvy online operators.

Then social came along

A few years later we started using social media channels to communicate. It started with blogs (and comments), moved on to social bookmarking and finally social networks like Facebook and thousands of others. Marketeers jumped on the bandwaggon and we now have branded Pages, feeds, profiles and what have you. I must admit that Facebook have done very well in terms of driving traffic, activity and repeat visitors to their social network. They seem to be faring well on social. But what about the others…?

Google Plus (or was it Gmail)

Have you signed up for Google Plus yet? If not, I'm sure you have received numerous emails about it. Do you have a Gmail account? You are probably bombarded with Google Plus messages from your contacts and Google themselves. The big G's whole business model here is built around pimping their email service, and then emailing everyone ad nauseum about it. You could ask whether this is social media or email media. Hopefully Google Plus will grow in to something with a life of its own and not having to rely on 20 year old technology (emails) to promote a cutting edge social network.

LinkedIn

One of the big challenges for LinkedIn is to drive engagement amongst its members. The stats say that the average user only logs into LinkedIn 2.9 times per month – the site is not exactly addictive in other words. So what does the LinkedIn Corporation do to keep you coming back to the site? Yes you guessed it, they send us plenty of emails. Whether it's a daily or weekly network digest, group updates, regular messages being forwarded to your email inbox or anything you commented on somewhere – emails are the driving force here. The demographic on LinkedIn are probably slightly more prone to emailing, many have BlackBerrys instead of iPhones so I can see how this works. Having said that, if there is one complaint people that I train have with LinkedIn, it's the number of emails they receieve (I then show them how to turn these off).

Groupon, LastMinute.com, Blogs

What is the business model of Groupon? Daily emails to a huge database. How do LastMinute.com get me to check London West End theatre tickets every week? Emails.

I have also noticed that bloggers who are very savvy on social media are pushing their email newsletters instead. Recently, Chris Brogan who is probably the world's most successful one-man blogging band has launched a new email initiative which I've subscribed to. He is trying to put the social back into emails by saying he actually replies to any questions and wants a conversation going. I haven't replied so don't know but I believe he woudl. Dan Schawbel and his personal branding blog is another example where he started pushing a newsletter recently, although the blog is very popular in itself and on social networks.

What's the appeal of emails?

Don't know about you, but I still trust an email more than I do a message on social somewhere. That 'somewhere' is just the point, I feel like social is sometimes a full on hurricane and switch from one network to another, whereas I only have one email inbox and it feels like a safe haven. If that's the case for others, surely marketeers will want to get email subscribers before followers on social.

That's two kronor on the power of emails, please let me know what you think? 

And whilst we're on the topic, check out How To Declutter Your Emails with Gmail.

Image credit Tim Morgan

Filed Under: Marketing, Monthly Tagged With: , , ,
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