Tag Archives: Digital Marketing

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Sunday Brunch Reads with Social Media ReInvention: Week of 11/30/14 to 12/4/14

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Sunday Brunch Newspaper

Photo Credit: Anton Diaz

Hi Social Media ReInvention Community Members! Apologies for not consistently posting our Sunday Brunch Edition. External circumstances prevented me from keeping up. I promise to do better job. I hope you celebrated blessed and happy Thanksgiving Holidays with loved ones and friends. 

Here are your share-worthy links. Enjoy your Sunday Brunch!

1) CNET: How-To Video: Upgrade Your RAM on Your MacBook Pro. I upgraded the RAM on my MacBook Pro 15 this week. I suck as a do-it-yourselfer (DIY). I researched required steps and tools to lessen my anxiety and increase my confidence. The Result: I successfully upgraded my MacBook Pro 15 (late 2011) from 4MB to 8 MB of RAM (and she performs like a champ)!

MacBook Pro 15 Successful RAM Upgrade

As I type, I’m running seven (7) applications: iTunes, Google Chrome (with 12 tabs open), Apple Preview, MarsEdit, Finder, Evernote, and Dashlane. Here’s the content I found most helpful: 

  • You’ll need a Phillips 00 screwdriver to unscrew the bottom panel. I paid a premium price for the iFixit 54 Bit Driver Kit because the magnetized screwdriver bits are HUGE in removing and reinserting the six (6) tiny screws on the back panel. There’s a reason I went to business school instead of medical school (HINT: I lack a surgeon's dexterity).

 

2) Fast Company: What Every Young Designer Should Know, From Legendary Apple Designer Susan Kare. Kare has two (2) simple rules for designers: 1) Fake It Tlll You Make It and 2) Design Never Really Changes. I personally relate to Rule #1. When she applied applied for Apple’s graphic designer position, she worked at a furniture store. She prepared for her interview by studying graphic design books from the Palo Alto library (direct article quotes): 

Having designed many of the Mac's early system fonts such as Chicago, the (original) San Francisco, Geneva, and Monaco, Kare is one of the pioneers of early digital typography. But when she first applied to Apple, she was pulling her type design qualifications out of thin air.
"I was working at a furniture store at the time, and I didn't know the first thing about designing a typeface," she told me. "But I'd studied graphic design, so I said, 'How hard can it be?'" So Kare went to the Palo Alto Library and took out a number of books on typography. "I even brought them to my interview to prove I knew something about type, if anyone asked!" she laughs. "I went into it totally green."

She's not so green now. Here's a great video of Susan Kare sharing her design expertise:

Susan Kare, Iconographer (EG8) from EG Conference on Vimeo.

 

If Susan Kare listened to The Resistance, she wouldn’t have achieved her Apple Legendary Designer status. So let’s fake it till we make it. Or, as Dorie Clark of Reinventing YOU, says: “Fake It Till You Become It.”    

 

3) Fortune Magazine: GE CMO Comstock's New Job: Reinventing the Lightbulb. I’m a HUGE Beth Comstock fan. Her strategy to reinvent and power (pun intended) GE's 130-year old lighting business includes embedding social and digital media throughout the business. Comstock transformed GE into a creative, infuential and credible digital marketing player:

Here’s a direct quote from the Google Think article about Beth Comstock titled Market Maker:

The 52-year-old often describes her job as "connecting the dots"–between GE's seven segments (Power & Water, Oil & Gas, Energy Management, Aviation, Transportation, Healthcare, Home & Business Solutions), its many markets, and between the company and the outside world. It's something Comstock regularly does as head of GE's sales, marketing, and communications, and in her management of the company's multi-billion-dollar Ecomagination and Healthymagination initiatives, dedicated to environmental and health care innovation respectively.
In her travels and conversations with customers, she constantly scans for patterns. "When you're in this business, you see a lot of things," Comstock notes. "Marketers are in a great position to notice if something's happening in an industry like energy or healthcare."


Think About that Quote for a Moment. Beth Comstock explained how a great marketer’s expertise is a game changing asset in understanding and exploiting opportunity. Digital and social media marketing continues accepting the rap, “we can’t measure return on investment (ROI)!” Follow her advice and make the case of how not only your digital marketing efforts identify relevant opportunities but also how your expertise uniquely enables you (personally) to identify new business opportunities.

If that’s not a measurable ROI, I’ll be this guy’s uncle:

Chimpanzee Uncle

Photo Credit: Gemma Stiles

 

Your Turn

Please let me know if you agree or disagree with my thoughts in the comments. I would love to hear from you. I’m here to read, listen, and learn from YOUR PERSPECTIVE.   Comments are open. So let’er rip!


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Content Curation #5: Three Articles I Bookmarked in Evernote This Week

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Number 3

 

The Premise / Goal / Timing of This Weekly Feature

Premise.  If you like the content in this blog, maybe you'll also like the content I regularly read, study, and curate from the Web.

Goal.  On a weekly basis, I'm going to publish links to three (3) articles I find interesting.  I'll include a brief explanation why I decided to curate them.  

Timing.  I'll publish this content every Saturday.

 

The Three Articles I Bookmarked in Evernote 


1. Why The PC Will Die Soon (Fast Company).  I suppose the real question to ask is "what do you mean by soon."  I'm not completely sold that the PC or MacBook will completely go away (at least not yet).  

But, I acknowledge consumers' desires to be "untethered" (I'm one of them). Consumer demand will continue driving advancements for better mobile and cloud applications enabling "heavy-lifting" content creation from a tablet (maybe even our smartphones someday).

Why I haven't purchased an iPad?  Convenience in content creation is the determining factor.  

I purchased a MacBook Pro about a month ago (and I LOVE IT).  My MacBook Pro provides the essential capabilities for heads-down content creation (i.e., word processing, spreadsheets, infographics, presentation slides, etc.) that an iPad can't conveniently deliver (at least presently).

Plus, my MacBook Pro:

  • Is mobile and light (I bring it on business trips with my work computer)
  • Comes with an easy-to-use keyboard for typing lengthy documents
  • Includes a 500 gigabyte hard drive 
  • Allows off-line usage
  • Is always "on and connected" (as long as I have access to a WiFi spot, I'm golden)
  • Has a DVD drive

Yes, I'd love to read my favorite technology content from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, Fast Company, and Wired all from an iPad.  Plus, I'd look really cool at the airport or a coffee shop by doing that with an iPad 3.

But, my laptop already does all of the above.  


2. P&G To Slash $10 Billion in Costs Over Five Years (Advertising Age).  Unfortunately, this decision includes 5,700+ jobs (including fewer P&G marketing executives).  Chairman-CEO Bob McDonald says P&G will shift investments away from traditional vehicles like TV to digital channels (e.g., mobile and social media):

"To cut costs without sacrificing impact, Mr. McDonald said P&G is using technology to shift spending from more traditional vehicles like TV to digital and mobile advertising and more efficiently target consumers, "allowing us to build one-on-one personal relationships with every consumer." He also expects to use more multibrand efforts to spread spending more efficiently among brands. He cited the kickoff of P&G's Summer Olympics program in January, which he said delivered more than 2.5 billion impressions in traditional and social media the first month alone and produced a bigger overall impact than the brands could have had by spending individually."

3. 22 Ways to Create a Compelling Content: When You Don't Have a Clue (Copyblogger).  This is a great idea starter for content marketing.  Plus, I love an infographic that delivers lots of data in a simple visual. 
22 Ways to Create Compelling Content - Infographic
Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger. 

 

Your Feedback Please!

I'd like to experiment with this type of post for the next two to three months.  Let me know what you think (especially if this idea sucks):

  • How can I improve the value of these weekly posts?
  • Is my initial timing choice for publication okay with you (e.g., middle of the week versus the end of it)?  If not, please tell me.
  • What content are you reading?  Please share your links with our community in the comments section!

 

Link to Photo Credit by Andreas Cappell via flickr

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19 Fabulous Social Media & Digital Marketing Books

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Book Visual 

I love studying books on social media and digital marketing.  They provide sources of inspiration for this blog, and constantly stimulate my creativity on the people and events driving marketing reinvention. 

If you're looking for some last-minute Christmas gifts for a family member, friend, or colleague who loves learning about social media or digital marketing, here's a list of books I recommend.


Social Media and Digital Marketing Books I've Studied, Written Reviews On, or Cited in this Blog

Social Media and Digital Marketing Books I'm Studying Now

Social Media and Digital Marketing Books I Plan to Study in 2011

Here's another great list of digital marketing books from Mitch Joel's Six Pixels of Separation Blog — The Digital Marketer's Master Library.

I recently found this great list of books by Boston-based authors from Josh Bernoff's Empowered Blog — Lots of great stuff here.

Conclusion

I hope you find these resources helpful, and if you've read some or all of these books please let me know your thoughts by submitting a comment. 

Any books you'd recommend or suggest I add to this list?  I'd love to hear your suggestions.  Please let me know what you learned and enjoyed about that particular book(s).

Many thanks for being part of this community and may you and your families have a Safe and Merry Christmas!


Photo Credit: By Zitona Via Flickr

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5 Tactics for Optimizing Your Online Visibility in Google Search Results

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Thinking Digital According to the Bloomberg article, Microsoft has Herculean Task in Taking on Google, Americans conducted 65% of their online searches using Google in May 2009. Bing, Microsoft's latest competitive offering, is making some headway and apparently caught the eye of Google co-founder, Sergey Brin (click here for the June 14, 2009 Mashable article). Bing's potential competitive threat benefits all online users because Google will continue improving its core business. This August 10, 2009 Mashable article discusses how Google's engineering team is upgrading the speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness of Google Search. The project is still in beta mode and is code named, Caffeine. In the foreseeable future, Google's online search dominance will continue so understanding its influence and impact on your online visibility is critically important.

Various reputable news sources report signs of an improving U.S. economy, but I'll believe the economic turnaround when I see it. Unfortunately, Corporate America is still conducting layoffs. Therefore, high online visibility to potential networking connections, corporate recruiters, or employers is vitally important. Whenever any of these three contact points researches "your name" on Google, you want to dominate the first and second page search results. If you don't own the majority of the Top 20 Google results, you may as well be invisible.

To boost your online visibility, I suggest the following five tactics. Each tactic is worth your time and effort. Remember that perfection and technical expertise are not a requirement — Just Get Started! The most important critical success factors are your commitment and persistence.

  • Start a Blog
  • Create a Google Profile
  • Participate in the Big Three Social Networking Sites: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
  • Post Comments on Other Blogs
  • Register with Frequently Updated Profile Sites (i.e., MyBlogLog, FriendFeed)

Tactic #1: Start a Blog
Blogs rank high in Google search results so this tactic cannot be emphasized enough. The Google algorithm rewards websites with frequently updated content. High ranking blogs are routinely updated on an hourly and daily basis. As a result, blogs garner a distinct advantage in the search engine results pages game (e.g., SERPs). This advantage is exactly why businesses and individuals should implement blogging as the foundation of an online marketing strategy.

For an easy-to-understand primer on how to create and maintain a blog, I highly recommend Dan Schawbel's eBook, Blogging Your Brand: A Complete Guide to Your Success. This well-structured reference literally walks you through a step-by-step process that's accessible to both Beginner and Expert bloggers.

Tactic #2: Create a Google Profile
One of the quickest and easiest ways to achieve a front-page Google search engine result is by creating a Google Profile. Google introduced this service in Spring 2009. For individuals completing a Google Profile, their name and profile is shown as Google search engine result #10 (in a search for that person's name). The Google Profile launch received a lot of press during this time which triggered a "land grab" for individual names. Still, this shouldn't discourage you from filling out an individual profile.

Another important reason for completing a Google Profile is you can use the customized URL created for your Google Profile as a "virtual business card" when posting your comments on other blogs. When you post a blog comment, you want the blog author and other respective commenters to "see who you are." Until I got my blog up and running, I relied on my Google Profile for posting blog comments or other instances when I required a personal web site URL.

If you need more information about Google Profiles, here are some helpful online resources:

Tactic #3: Participate in the Big Three Social Networking Sites: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
On June 18, 2009, eMarketer published the article, Facebook Overtakes MySpace. The statistics confirmed Facebook's supremacy as the top social networking site. Additional data I found interesting included how Twitter experienced explosive growth of ~2,700% and LinkedIn grew by 90%. MySpace still ranks as the second largest social networking site, but its traffic and membership are steadily declining. Profiles from these sites rank high in Google Search, but I recommend focusing on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (especially if you're a social networking newbie). To maximize your online visibility, make sure you consistently employ your real name as your profile username (i.e., www.twitter.com/yourfirstnameyourlastname or www.twitter.com/tonyfaustino or www.facebook.com/tonyfaustino).

Tactic #4: Post Comments on Other Blogs
Commenting on other blogs provides an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge in a particular subject or industry. In the online world, commenting on another person's blog is the equivalent of attending a face-to-face networking event. Take advantage of this opportunity to make a great impression! Your comments also give Google another means of indexing your name. By consistently posting blog comments, you'll compile a critical mass over time. As a result, Google will display these comments in future search results related to your name.

Also, register with BackType.com so you can maintain an online record of all of your blog comments. You never know when those comments might come in handy for a future blog post.

Tactic #5: Register with Frequently Updated Profile Sites (i.e., MyBlogLog, FriendFeed)
Member profiles in social networks like MyBlogLog.com and FriendFeed rank high in Google Searches because their content is frequently updated. These sites aggregate your activity or updates in other social networking sites such as Twitter or Delicious.com. Therefore, every time you send out a tweet or bookmark an article or website, the activity is automatically recorded as "an information stream." These "information streams" are searchable, indexed, and provide a great opportunity displaying your name in the Top 20 Google Search results.

Photo Credit: By Karl Schneider via Flickr

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Why Studying Me 2.0 Can Reinvent the Career of a 40-Something Working Professional

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Me 20 Book CoverI purchased Dan Schawbel’s book, Me 2.0, in Spring 2009.  Since that time, I’ve diligently studied and implemented Dan’s advice particularly in creating and promoting a personal blog.  Dan is the lead author and founder of the Personal Branding Blog and Personal Branding Magazine.  He’s a nationally recognized expert, and I avidly read his blog for helpful insights relating to online personal brand management.  Dan also has a number of talented, contributing authors to the Personal Branding Blog such as Chad Levitt and Jun Loayza whose articles I regularly study.

Me 2.0’s target audience is the Generation Y demographic.  The book provides excellent guidance on interview preparation, interviewing skills, and professional networking that I wish someone would have shared with me 20+ years ago.  Young undergraduates and graduates competing in today’s job market should heed Dan’s guidance.  These two Wall Street Journal articles provide sobering evidence: With Jobs Scarce, Age Becomes an Issue: More Young Workers are at Risk of Layoffs as Employers Grow Wary of Letting Older Employees Go and The Curse of the Class of 2009: For College Graduates Lucky Enough to Get Work this Year, Low Wages are Likely to Haunt Them for a Decade or More. 

Furthermore, 40-Something Working Professionals (like me) can tremendously benefit from Me 2.0’s advice on online personal branding.  According to Me 2.0, effectively creating and promoting a blog are foundation principles in successful online personal branding.  Until I started studying Me 2.0 and Dan Schawbel’s free eBook, Blogging Your Brand: A Complete Guide to Your Success, I had no idea about “the basics” and overall commitment required to effectively create, optimize, promote, and maintain a blog.  These two resources educated me on purposefully:

·     Positioning my knowledge about a subject I’m passionate about (e.g., social media and digital marketing strategy)

·     Establishing my personal brand online (as evidenced by Google Search Engine Page Results / SERPs on my name)

·     Optimizing and promoting my blog via search engine marketing and by commenting on other bloggers’ blogs

·     Evaluating and selecting a blog hosting service such as TypePad or WordPress (along with other infrastructure considerations)

·     Claiming my blog on Technorati.com (and other relevant steps to “owning” my online identity)

I’ve been executing Me 2.0’s lessons in professionally branding myself as an inbound marketer and social media / digital marketing advocate.  Writing The Social Media Reinvention Blog and earning the Inbound Marketing Certified Professional Certification are cornerstones of this branding strategy and the reinvention of my professional skills. The online publication of my new blog, catalog of blog comments, and tweets on Twitter will credibly present my personal wherewithal and knowledge in a Web 2.0 world. 

Studying and implementing Me 2.0's lessons provided me the "hands-on guidance" I required to purposefully build and shape that knowledge.

And the journey continues …