By Josh Cline
Your company might have clout in your industry – but does it have Klout?
Klout, as you may have heard, is a website that automatically attaches a rating from 1 to 100 to everyone – and every business – who has at least a public Twitter account. Those whose numbers are higher have more “clout” on social-media networks.
And why is your score important?
As Seth Stevenson writes in Wired:
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This post is the first in a series relating lessons from popular Aesop’s Fables to strategic communications and marketing.
The Ant and the Grasshopper:
“The ants were spending a fine winter’s day drying grain collected in the summertime. A Grasshopper, perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food. The Ants inquired of him, “Why did you not treasure up food during the summer?’ He replied, “I had not leisure enough. I passed the days in singing.” They then said in derision: “If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter.”
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By Josh Cline
As technological innovations occur at an ever-increasing rate, marketers often develop unrealistic expectations because they think that each new gadget or medium has made all of the previous communications strategies obsolete.
Far from it. For example, social media is a form of public relations and not some heaven-sent technology that has changed everything, and as such, it and other online-marketing methods need to incorporate traditional best-practices from the beginning. It is crucial not to throw decades of communications knowledge out the digital window. Companies today need to ignore the so-called “hype cycles” that occur in all new marketing mediums and methods, instead understanding that classic communications theory never changes.
Read MoreTEL AVIV – Here in the Silicon Valley of the Middle East, I finally saw the hit movie “The Avengers” only recently since it had finally come to Israeli cable TV. As a fan of Joss Whedon, who directed the film and had created my favorite TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” back in 1997, I loved watching how a group of heroes with expertise in specific areas came together for the common good because I saw many parallels with how so-called “SEO” needs to function today.
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By Josh Cline
Over the past five years, many public-relations professionals (some have called them publicists) became “social-media gurus” overnight, writing books and helping to spin what social-media marketing and SEO allegedly really are. Then, they became “digital-marketing specialists” or gave themselves other titles. Eventually, many woke up and realized again that, in the end, they are still marketing and communication specialists. Several have written three or more books since 2007 to regain their places as true marketing professionals.
Read MoreIf you want to understand why pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has become a less and less viable option for small businesses and start-up companies, ask Tom Telford.
According to a recent article in the New York Times, he had founded a vacation rental-management firm named Blue Creek Cabins and had been paying Google roughly $0.60 per click in paid-advertising campaigns since 2001 in return for many leads and sales.
However, his success did not last:
Read MoreAt one point in my career, I was hired to manage the digital marketing for a particular Israeli start-up, which would ultimately end up folding over two months later due to a lack of successful fundraising. During this period of time, the CEO had asked me to create an Excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint for promising investors on the potential for market penetration.
Supposedly, the start-up had had a way to convert speech to text in some new, exciting manner (the product would automatically transcribe voicemail and then send it to you over e-mail or text message), and the goal, I was told, was to exit by selling to Google. First, however, they needed to obtain investment and subsequently show successful sales and usage within various test markets.
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Note: This is the first part in a series.
In 2008, Forrester Vice Presidents Carlene Li and Josh Bernoff published “Groundswell,” a revolutionary book about business and marketing in what was then the beginning of the mainstreaming of social media. Four years later, their thoughts have not only become predicative of the growing trend of social media but have become essential for understanding the greater context in marketing and public relations.
The nutshell: For practically any product or service, there are thousands, if not millions, of Internet users who would love nothing more than to become unknowing brand ambassadors and help to spread the digital word. You just need to locate and then inspire them.
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Note: This is the third part in an ongoing series. Parts one and two.
Social media is all about the “social.” On Twitter, you want to converse not only with influencers and journalists but also with current and potential customers. On LinkedIn, you want to brand both yourself and your company as experts in your particular sector while still participating in group discussions and LinkedIn Answers.
On Facebook, however, the rules have changed. Now, the social-network giant has set its sights on establishing its monetary benefits. (More on that later.)
Read MoreLet’s face it: we are a visually-oriented society. From images to video, the manner in which we prefer to process information has continued to move toward these optically-stimulating mediums. As this cultural preference has become ingrained in society, consumers have come to expect – nay, demand – that their chosen brands and companies be prepackaged with familiar and relatable storylines that are presented in this manner.
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