Welcome Back to Sunday Links with Social Media ReInvention
I want to thank the new subscribers who decided to receive future posts from Social Media ReInvention. You know who you are, and I’m grateful for your vote of confidence.
Your conscious decision to invest your Sunday time and attention here humbles and inspires me. Thank YOU!
Today’s Sunday Links summaries revolve around a specific storyline — Personalization.
Summary 1 — Email Marketing: 1. If You’re Automating Your Emails, Please Personalize Them
Summary 2 — Inbound Marketing: 2. Personalized Blog Posts are the New Unique
Summary 3 — Strategy: 3. Amazon HQ2 Selection Is Personal for the Cities Who Lost
A Reboot To Sunday Links With Social Media Reinvention
I’m rebooting my life. I won’t bore you with the details.
Starting over is a painful process. Changes occur in our lives whether we are ready or not. I am re-grouping and re-prioritizing what’s important in my personal and professional life.
Time heals all wounds (well at least some of them). Most of all, it became clear why I started this marketing strategy blog in the first place:
I LOVE to write. It EXERCISES my brain.
I write for ME.
That’s WHY I love it.
I’m also back to regularly working out my body too. It hurts when you’ve haven’t done something consistently for a long time.
Something tells me committing to writing regularly will bring many of the same aches and pains. That’s okay. I can live with that. Baby steps.
So, it’s time to write. But, what do I write about? I’ll figure that out as I go. And, I hope to have fun along the way.
To kickstart things, I’ll curate links from my favorite news sites and marketing strategy blogs and summarize key points from the articles.
The goal: Publish at least two Sunday posts per month.
These posts will focus on:
Email Marketing: Tips and insights on using marketing’s most measurable channel.
Reader Friendly Content Grows Buyer Trust and Improves Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Each of this week’s articles support that theme differently. These experts’ insights show how reader friendly content builds trust and enhances SEO:
Writing naturally benefits the reader and sends a positive signal to Google (versus forcing keywords into our copy).
Gaining a buyer’s trust begins with trusting our instincts. Being ourselves is attainable and healthy. “Being remarkable” can be misleading because it’s a relative standard.
Earning trust in a machine learning age (aka Google’s RankBrain) will continuously redefine what’s “reader friendly content.” Artificial intelligence search applications will line up content marketing and SEO even more closely with personal branding and thought leadership authority.
Trustworthiness and its link to helpfulness is a major signal in Google’s secret sauce.
How the company chooses to measure trust in its search algorithm continues evolving. We better pay close attention because Google wields the monopolistic power to either reward or punish our content.
That’s why I think WHAT we write and HOW we write is a vital SEO tactic. Here’s my take on why reader friendly content is great SEO now (and in the future).
Our Buyers Drive Content Marketing and SEO Decisions
The Theme Pulsing Through This Week’s Article Links. These expert pearls show why the problems keeping our buyers awake at night fuel content marketing and SEO (search engine optimization). Their wisdom touches on:
The devices consumers use to find our businesses and articles online. (Hint: Rhymes with smartphone).
The signals Google looks for and takes into account for ranking our websites and content.
The importance of keyword density. (Hint: Not as much as we thought).
Buyer personas rich with details on the buyer’s pre-buy research behaviors are a strategic advantage.
Check out these article summaries which I know will make us better marketers, writers, and search engine optimization professionals.
Successful Inbound Marketing and Public Relations Requires Content Marketing and SEO Work Together
This past week, I attended webinars, started studying books, and read articles with a common theme: When content marketing and SEO work together, long term, impactful business goals are achieved.
This resounding theme also touches upon another key element: a publishing strategy integrating content marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) is sustainable. These experts share their views on important changes in marketing organization (and individual) skills, mindsets, and organizational structures.
That’s a huge deal for all businesses:
Large Corporations
Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)
Freelance Professionals
Here are links to these great articles on where inbound marketing and public relations are heading to deliver more meaningful business outcomes and results.
HubSpot’s Inbound Certification Video Class 3: “What Does Inbound Look Like?” shares how a real-world company successfully practices inbound marketing. This is a valuable class as a real-world, spot-on buyer persona case study.
This buyer persona case study proves how well-crafted buyer personas can:
Drive inbound marketing strategy and tactics
Link together content marketing and SEO choices
Support a company’s sales and revenue goals
Here’s what to expect from this blog post on these inbound marketing best practices (and future blog posts) as I prepare for the inbound marketing certification exam:
Open Sharing. I’ll publish my study notes on this blog as I review each video in the twelve (12) classes.
Detail. My notes will be very detailed. Many of the slides in the video classes state the learning or take-home-message perfectly. If I think that’s the best way to state the learning, I’ll record the learning in my notes verbatim from the respective slide.
Context. I’ll provide my context whenever it may help us better understand the inbound marketing and sales concept(s).
These posts in the blogosphere and LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform showcase employment trends describing why a personal blog or website is a vital 2015 professional development goal:
I’d like to add an important and overlooked reason for investing in our own online real estate: Being Blind-Sided by an Online Platform’s Policy Changes.
Brrrr! It’s cold in The Midwest (East/West Coaster Translation: The Flyover States). Please keep warm and enjoy these share-worthy links during your Sunday brunch. (more…)
I love reading books. They’re my secret weapon for accessing critical thinking. Here’s a short listing of my favorite books / authors who inspired me and exhausted my Kindle in 2014 (by the author’s last name in alphabetical order). Note: Some of these titles are pre-2014.
Seth calls out our schadenreude, spectator sport culture, and it’s power in curbing intelligent risk taking (except in Silicon Valley). When It’s Your Turn is an in-your-face, call-to-arms, entrepreneurship manifesto. The battle cry rallies around showing up everyday, to create and ship our art. Now’s the time to revel in that uncomfortable place of “this may or may not work.”
I’m moving into a new career as an entrepreneur in an early stage startup, That’s a scary leap after corporate life. But, those simultaneous feelings and fear are the right place to be:
I’m late in reading this classic marketing book. I hope to meet Seth, shake his hand, and talk marketing strategy. That requires fluency in Ideavirus terminology (i.e., sneezers – both promiscuous and powerful, the hive, persistence — not the one related to effort, vector, vacuum, amplifier, smoothness, etc.).
Technical prowess and technical insight aren’t enough. Creative storytelling and written communication carry equal weight (direct quote from Everybody Writes, page eight):
What’s harder is to find a book that functions for marketers as part writing and story guide, part instructional manual on the ground rules of ethical publishing, and part straight talk on some muscle-building writing processes and habits.
What’s also hard to find is a book that distills some helpful ideas about the craft of content simply and (I hope) memorably, framed for the marketer and businessperson, as opposed to say, the novelist or essayist or journalist.
I wrote this book because I couldn’t find what I wanted—part writing guide, part handbook on the rules of good sportsmanship in content marketing, and all-around reliable desk companion for anyone creating or directing content on behalf of brands.
Everybody Writes teaches disciplined practice to elevate and sustain our writing skills. Ann’s book reads like cozy conversation with her while enjoying a great cup of coffee or a couple of frosty Sam Adams beers (keep in mind, she’s a Bostonian).
Ann poured her heart and soul into this work (or as she says “gave birth to a Volkswagen”). I guarantee you’ll benefit from her knowledge, talent, and heart.
If Tribes is the strategic and conceptual framework for digital leadership, Platform is the tactical roadmap for its successful execution. Creating and managing a personal brand is imperative in a crowded marketplace and recovering economy. Michael’s book unpacks the why’s and how’s of building a digital platform — i.e., the collective fans who subscribe to and follow your blog, email newsletter, podcast, Twitter feed, etc.
He explains step-by-step how he built his influential online presence and to power his career as a publisher, educator, and public speaker.
Art takes many forms (e.g., words, pictures, spreadsheets, presentations, sculptures, music, photographs, process diagrams, or anything we create with pride). These remarkable books capture Austin Kleon‘s philosophies and experiences on creating and promoting art. These fun, short reads answer two common questions among artists, writers, entrepreneurs, or marketers:
Question 1: How Do I Create My Art? Answer: Steal Like an Artist
Question 2: How Do I Promote My Art? Answer: Show Your Work
Austin’s writing and storytelling teach “how to get out of your own way.” Yes, creativity and innovation are messy. They’re hard and time-consuming. Manage those frustrations / fears so you focus on creating and shipping. Struggle produces. Struggle inspires. Steal. Show. Repeat.
Thank goodness that’s exactly what Judy teaches! Her book will change my life. Invest in yourself by buying and studying How to Be a Power Connector. It will change your life too.
Traction delivers a clear, how-to method supported by real-world, actionable insights. Gabriel‘s and Justin‘s interviews and case studies describe the successful execution of Traction’s Bulls Eye Methodology. Bulls Eye focuses on the second most important aspect of an early stage startup’s life cycle:
Critical Success Factor Number 1: Create, release, test, iterate, your product or service (hopefully, a good one solving a current problem)
Critical Success Factor Number 2: Get customers by experimenting / testing, measuring, and ultimately focusing on one customer acquisition tactic
Critical Success Factor Number 3: Max out the customer acquisition in CSF Number 2 and repeat Bulls Eye to find another customer acquisition tactic
Please share in the comments the digital marketing and entrepreneurship business books you read in 2014. What did you love about them? How did they inspire you?
I’m here to learn from YOUR PERSPECTIVE. Comments are open. Let’er rip!