A Great Video Points the Way to Effective Use of RSS

Written by Paul Mosensen

An overview on Google Reader, and how to manage RSS feeds, folders, share buttons, and integrate with LinkedIn, Google Alerts, Google+, and Twitter……

Via www.youtube.com

Image hazel.estrada via Flickr CC

[This is a perfect example of what John is discussing. We have curated his post via Scoop.It.]

Written by John Jantsch

You need lots of content, you know that, but you also know that content creation is one of the more time intensive marketing activities you have to tackle.

While you do need to create your own content as the foundation for your total content and teaching strategy, you can – and should – supplement your content with that from other people.

One of the best services marketers can provide these days is to act as a filter for all that’s being produced out there and aggregate the best of the best on behalf of our communities.

Finding and sharing consistently high quality, relevant content and adding insight to this information is not only a great way to increase the volume of your content, it’s a great way build trust in the value of your content.

Here are 5 ways to go about it: Go to DuctTape Marketing Blog

Via Scoop.it – Content Marketing Now

Written by Chuck Frey on his “Mind Mapping Software Blog”.

Grow your core business by looking for adjacent markets, technologies or areas of focus where you can expand. Here’s how to do it visually.

One of the key strategies for innovation and business development today is to look beyond your core business for adjacent markets, technologies or areas of focus where you can expand without severely taxing the resources of your organization. Tools like mind mapping and business diagramming can help you to visualize these adjacencies and to make informed decisions about which opportunities to pursue.

The diagram above depicts the Mind Mapping Software Blog as the center of my content universe. However, I realized several years ago that there’s much going on in the adjoining topics that may also be of value to you, flavors of visual thinking such as business diagramming, infographics and sketching. My core business continues to be focused on mind mapping software. But I have “zoomed out” to include some additional topics within the broader category of visual thinking, which adds a new dimension of value to my blog.

Read the full story on:  mindmappingsoftwareblog.com

Via Scoop.it – Content Marketing Now

From the Hubspot Blog, by Karen Rubin

HubSpot launches a free new tool to help you evaluate and improve the effectiveness of your entire marketing program.

Since 2006, HubSpot’s award-winning free tool, Website Grader, has graded more than 4 million websites. Website Grader has given marketers advice on how to improve many aspects of their websites and encouraged millions to bring their website presence to the next level, all for free.

But now the time has come to replace Website Grader! A lot has changed since 2006, and these days, marketing is about much more than just your website.

Why is Marketing Grader Replacing Website Grader?

In 2012, marketing is about more than just your website. It’s about social, mobile, blogging, email marketing, lead nurturing, and analytics. As a marketer, you need to be aware of how your marketing impacts your entire sales and marketing funnel from the top of the funnel to the middle of the funnel. Marketing Grader does just this by analyzing all aspects of your marketing efforts and letting you know where you’re succeeding and what you need to spend more time improving.

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29274/HubSpot-Launches-Free-Marketing-Grader-Tool-to-Replace-Website-Grader.aspx#ixzz1hBsjpKyg

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29274/HubSpot-Launches-Free-Marketing-Grader-Tool-to-Replace-Website-Grader.aspx#ixzz1fnkZP9xW
Via blog.hubspot.com

Another Excellent Infographic Offers Content Marketers a First Baby Step to Findability

Courtesy of PPCBlog.com

If you’re in business today, you have to be on the Internet.  But, being there is barely a beginning.

Once you are on the Internet, it’s vital that your potential customers can find you and your content by searching on Google and other search engines. That’s what SEO is all about.

Before Fretting about SEO, First Get a Clue About How Google Works from PPCBLOG’s Infographic

There have been lots of books white papers, articles and websites devoted to the whole issue of Google and search engine optimization. But for most of business owners and professionals, a basic understanding of how Google works will suffice so that you won’t be bamboozled when some slick-talking SEO sales rep tries to make getting found by Google and the rest sound more complicated than it actually is.

That’s why I love this infographic that takes you on a virtual walk-through of the Google search process. Take five minutes to go through it, you will have a much better understanding of what Google and search engines are all about.

Perhaps this inspiring infographic will also motivate you to create your own visual to illustrate to your potential customers how your business or service works to their benefit.

Check out the full size “How Google Works” infographic at PPCBlog.com

Let Infographics Help You Make Your Point Instantly

Here’s a great example of an effective infographic that illustrates social media behavior by age group, based on a Forrester Research study.  With few words and relevant graphics, it enables us to absorb lots of information in a hurry.

That’s what effective infographics are all about.

I fully understand the importance of the visual component of content, but I’m not very good at conceptualizing or creating great visuals to illustrate the points that I’m trying to make.

So, I was delighted to find a wonderfully helpful—and visual—site that is putting me on the right track: CoolInfographics.com from Randy Krum. As he indicates, it’s all about getting your point across. Which, in turn, is essential to effective content marketing. You must make it obvious to your target customers why your content is relevant and important to them. On the web, you have only a few seconds to make that happen. Effective infographics can make that all-important instant connection.

If you need as much visual help as I do, you’ll love Randy’s site and his recent post with practical advice—illustrated with infographic examples, of course– for us verbal types.

Here are 5 practical infographic tips from Randy’s recent blog post, 10 Tips for (Journalists) Designing Infographics:

1. Be Concise: Design your infographic to convey one idea really well. That is, keep it simple for the viewer so they can really absorb your point.
2. Be Visual:  Design your infographic with your final for viewing size in mind.  Don’t allude to a chart they need to click on to view. Keep them involved with your text while they look at the infographic.
3. Be Different:  If you can avoid it, don’t use a bar chart, a line chart or a pie chart.  Grab readers attention by doing something that is unique while still making your point effectively.
4. Be Accurate: Remember your geometry and visualize differences using area. Thus, if you are using circles to represent relative size, make sure that illustrating 3X larger, you use a circle that is 3X bigger, not 9X bigger.
5. Be Varied:  Find a good visual style that’s right for the data you’re trying to share.  If your data is about countries, plot it on a world map not a bar chart that lists countries. To illustrate this point, Randy showed the infographic below from Emily Schwartzman about the aftermath of the hurricane that devastated Haiti in 2009

Words work well. But pictures in the form of infographics can make all the difference in getting your point across in an instant. Once you have captured readers with your picture, you can then wow them with your words.

Here are some links that Randy offered to visual tools available on the Internet to help and inspire you in building your own infographics:

• Tableau Public
• Many Eyes
• Swivel
• Google Public Data Explorer
• Gapminder
• Wordle
• WorldMapper
• GunnMap
• StatPlanet Map Maker

If you are in the business of trying to communicate complex information in a simple and compelling way, you will want to become a regular visitor of CoolInfographics.com.

Get Ready to Rethink Your Content Marketing by Aiming at Millions of Buyers on the Move

For those of us who been around computing since the early days of PCs, the consumer move to mobile devices and away from desktop and even laptop computers is astonishing–and maybe a little terrifying.

In the first year of its existence, 1981, the IBM PC sold 100,000 units. Most of those buyers were geeks or leading-edge business users. Apple’s iPad sold 1 million units in less than one month and 2 million units in just two months. IPad users still include geeks and business types but they’re just as likely to include your six-year-old and your grandmother.

These unbelievable sales numbers represent a fundamental transformation in the way a very large segment of the population is consuming information and accessing the Internet. To get some idea of the seismic nature of this shift take a look my favorite highlights from a presentation given by Morgan Stanley at the June 2010 CM Summit in New York City:

Amazing Mobile Computing Facts from Morgan Stanley’s Presentation:

• It took more than 1 year to sell 1 Million iPods but only 28 days to sell 1 Million +iPads
• Billions of mobile apps have been downloaded:
  • 4B iPhone
  • 400MM Android
  • 12MM iPad (in just 6 weeks)
• In 2010 more Smartphones will be sold than either desktop or laptop computers
• In 2012 Smartphones will out sell desktop and laptop computers combined!
• Among Smartphone users as of April 2010,
  • 48% have browsed the web
  • 40% have used social media
  • 30% read the news
• The iPhone represents 55% of mobile page views
• At the end of 2009 twice as much time was spent on social networking as on e-mail
• Thanks to mobile devices, consumers are already doing cloud computing, leaving the enterprise behind
• Since 2008, mobile users have come to expect:
  • always on access with super fast boot time
  • near zero latency access to nearly all information
  • daylong plus battery life and elegant portable devices

Cranky Laptops Cave to Cuddly and Communicative IPads

It happened to me and it’s probably happened to you, too.

Within the past several days, I had to reach out to professionals to bring a six month old laptop back from a near-death experience.  After three hours on the phone with an exceptionally patient and competent HP technician, I was both homicidal and suicidal.

We don’t want that. We want our information and our connectivity right now. We want easy and we want painless.

That’s exactly what’s driving so many millions of  customers to mobile devices of which the iPad may be the perfect prototype. In fact, if I could write and dictate articles easily on the iPad, I would probably have tossed my laptop out the window.

IPad and Its Mobile Cousins to the Rescue

The iPad, or something very much like it, is what we really want from our information devices. It turns on immediately. It’s super responsive. It easily connects to the Internet. It’s both powerful and portable. And, perhaps best of all, it doesn’t rely on a resource hog of an operating system and a bunch of pesky devices that fail when you most need them.

For those of us who do a lot of writing, building complex spreadsheets or other very sophisticated applications, we will probably have to hang on to our desktop or laptop computers. But for many of you and for many of your customers, the use of computing devices is primarily:

• to connect and communicate wherever we are whenever we want
• to consume information via the Internet, including e-mail, news, web-based content
• to get our social media fix
• to consume locally based information from word processing documents, spreadsheets, PDF files, etc.
• to write a short e-mail or text messages
• to listen to music, watch videos, watch TV or movies
• to play games

We can do all of that with an increasingly rich and robust set of mobile computing devices that include not only the iPad but the iPhone, Blackberry, Android devices, and some potentially  terrific tablet computers just over the horizon.

That means that just when you thought it was safe to go back into the content marketing water, you will have to do a bit of rethinking. But I think it’s more a matter of adjustment than a dramatic change in your approach to your customers.

How to Take Advantage of This Content Marketing Mobile Inflection Point

You are almost certainly using the Internet as a primary content marketing weapon.  And, it is probably delivering significant a better results than many of your traditional advertising and marketing practices. Now, begin to think slightly differently as your customers go mobile for much of the information they consume.

• Make sure that your website is fully readable on the most important mobile devices which would include the iPhone, the Android, and the iPad. That may mean giving up Flash. At a minimum, it’s critical that any flash on your website takes a secondary rather than a primary role on your home and on your landing pages.
• Consider working with a developer to create an iPhone or an iPad app that will take advantage of the unique capabilities of these two pervasive computing devices.  In particular, think about how the touchscreen might improve your users interaction with your content.
• Get social with Facebook, Twitter or other applications that can reach out to your customers with special offers while they’re on the move and in a buying mood.  As indicated above, 40% are actively pursuing social media opportunities while on their smart phone or iPad.
• Provide special offers, coupons, or dedicated discounts that mobile users can bring with them directly on their smart phone or iPad.  Don’t make them print something out if they can to show it to you on their mobile device.

We are at the beginning of a fundamental transformation in the way that we all consume information. Our customers and their computers are on the move as never before.  Just as you may have tried to reach traveling prospects with billboard ads on the highway, now it’s time to make sure that you’re connecting with them on the virtual highway.

The good news is that, unlike driving a Corvette on Route 66, your prospects can slow down to pay attention to what you have to say. Just make sure that the new mobile information you’re providing is still relevant and compelling as all good content marketers do.

If you’d like to see the entire Morgan Stanley presentation you can click below:

Bring Your Business Up to Speed with Timely Tips from SW Florida Experts

Although our Southwest Florida region comprises mostly small businesses, we are blessed with a surprising number of savvy local experts on content marketing and social media. I was delighted to take part in a recent Collier Business Industry Association (CBIA) Sales and Marketing Council session with just such a group:

• Marc Meyer, Principle at Digital Response Marketing Group
• Jim Cossetta, cofounder of 4what.com
• Paul Mussina, President, Business Technology insight

Attendees from the building industry and related companies struggle with two simultaneous challenges:

• They are suffering from our a especially steep downturn in building that limits both people and dollar resources.
• They need to transform from traditional marketing methods to content marketing and social media.

Fortunately, there is a new generation of affordable tools and techniques that can make that transformation inexpensive—and with a bit of outside help—almost painless.

Here are some practical lessons on content marketing and social media that I’d like to share from the St. Patrick’s Day session.

Top 10 takeaways from my speaker colleagues

1. Social media in general and Twitter in particular are as much about listening as they are about broadcasting. To make this easy, use one of the powerful software tools available. Social media guru, Marc Meyer, suggested TweetDeck as his favorite.
2. Marc noted that you won’t succeed by spending all your time pimping your products and services.  That’s exactly the kind of unwanted spam that content marketers need to avoid.
3. Don’t bother to tweet unless you have something worthwhile to contribute to a set of Twitter followers who share your interests.
4. With Twitter and any social media effort you must allow enough time for results that will slowly build over time. Consistency is critical to your success, as Marc stressed.
5. According to Marc, you are not engaging with content marketing and social media for fun, even though it might be enjoyable. You’re doing it either to make money, to save money or to build equity.
6. "Become a news anchor for your business." That was Jim Cossetta’s advice for thinking about how to use video effectively for content marketing.  In other words, put yourself out front as the most effective spokesperson to explain how your company can benefit its customers by leading them to your site with an introductory video tour.
7. Take advantage of incredibly inexpensive technology like the Sony flip cam to create your own television studio.
8. Consider using video in tandem with your promotional e-mails to create a ‘wow factor.’ He used the example of local contractor, Statewide Painting and their recent email effort which allowed video to tell the story.
9. Make an RFP much less boring by integrating video to demonstrate exactly how you can meet the requirements of the RFP and help your prospect achieve its objectives with your assistance. In effect, you are able to give an in person visual presentation without actually being there.
10. For those of us, who are still using spreadsheets or antiquated content management tools for customer relationship management (CRM), it’s time to step up our game by investing in affordable products that can improve sales results dramatically, according to Paul Messino.

Summing up:

It’s time to implement content marketing and social media as core components in your business strategy. But, there are now plenty of tools and techniques that make it pretty darned easy and inexpensive.

A Powerful, Portable, Flexible, Connected, Social, and Cool Information and Entertainment Device for the 21st Century

[I have made corrections below on the elements to the original story re Apple Newton. I made the edits because careful reader, Zach Leary, noted my Steve Jobs history was way off and that he had no involvement in the creation or development of the Newton.]

Timing is everything. Too early with too little for too few and you lose. That was the fate of the Apple Newton which might be considered the great grandfather of the iPad.

That won’t be the future of the iPad as it comes to market at just the right time, providing a marvelous new outlet for content marketers to capture the increasingly mobile digital generation that now includes most of us.

The Sad Fate of the Apple Newton in the 1990s. Great idea. Unfortunate timing.

For Apple, the Newton was a tablet pc that was too early to deliver on its lofty promise in the early 90s.  It failed not because the ultimate concept was wrong, but because users weren’t screaming for a mobile device and because the Newton’s capabilities were limited and disappointing to many.  In many respects, the Newton was a remarkable product for its time, but it didn’t deliver enough value to captivate millions of users as its descendents the iPod and iPhone have done.

Apple might have been too early with a tablet but will be will be proven right over time. Steve Jobs killed it off in 1998 when he returned after his multi-year hiatus.  But the tablet concept lived on.

The iPad delivers what the Newton just hinted at . This new device reflects everything Apple has learned about computing and communications as they introduced and continually improved their highly mobile products–from the Newton to the iPod, to the iPhone, and now to the iPad.

The iPad in 2010 is Dressed for Success.  Incredible idea. Terrific timing. Genuine Game Changer.

The new iPad dwarfs the old Newton: It’s colorful, connected, powerful, packed with storage, easy to use, larger, thinner, and just a bit heavier.

The iPad not only delivers solutions for today’s users demand, but is perfectly positioned to dominate for years to come as the standard for tablet computing on the go.

When you introduce a product that matches a confluence of powerful trends, you win.  Here’s why I believe that the iPad is that product:

The iPad: Dominating 2 Critical Trends That Will Drive the Future of Computing

1. Print is giving way to digital content for almost every generation. This seismic shift applies to books…to newspapers…to magazines…to catalogues…to advertising…to direct marketing.  It’s impossible to avoid headlines that shout out the disintegration of traditional print.  Even the best newspapers struggle with print while attempting to make their online products both compelling and profitable.  Costs are up. Subscriptions are down. Staffing has been slashed. Ad revenues have plummeted.
   We are consuming our information digitally and leaving paper behind.  That trend will only accelerate as we find just the right digital solution to meet our information consumption needs.
2. There is another equally powerful tectonic transition– from stationary to mobile. Today we expect to be able to compute and to connect with the world on the run. We also expect to receive the information we want instantly wherever we are. And, since the days of portable cassette players and the Sony Discman, we also want to take our entertainment with us as well.  But, now the definition of entertainment is much broader and includes games, movies, books, and magazines. We want our fun on the run.

In short, we want everything that we have always wanted but we want it on our terms. We are impatient mobile consumers of information and infotainment.

Apple: Seducing Us First with the iPod and the iPhone—Tablet PCs by Any Other Name

Apple has been warming up users with small devices that they adore—the iPod and the iPhone. They have trained us to love their own version of  ‘tablet pc’s’ even though that’s not what they called them. Hundreds of millions of users are now comfortable using Apple touch screens and virtual keyboards even on these super small computers.  That makes them tiny—and unbelievably successful–tablet computers.  The numbers tell the story:

• The iPod. Launched October 2001. 240 million sold by Jan 2010.
• The iPhone. Launched June 2007. 33.75 million sold by Q4 2009.

In spite of  the iPhone/iPod’s miniature form factor, millions of users are using these computing cousins for much more than phones or music devices. They are put them to work:

• to browse the internet
• to read online newspapers and magazines in the browser
• to read books via Kindle iPhone app
• to manage calendar and task info
• to manage finances
• to play games
• to connect with friends/colleagues via email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
• to share pix and videos
• to use a myriad of business and personal applications—2 billion downloaded by Q3 2009.

Soon users will be doing even more, more enjoyably by migrating to the next generation of tablet computers: the IPad.

Let’s Get Large. Bringing the Best of the iPod/iPhone to the iPad

If millions of users are doing so much with such tiny devices, imagine what they will do with a WIFI-enabled, full color, backlit, iPad with a 9.7” screen with 10 hours of reading time.  That’s as large as a small laptop or typical netbook, every bit as powerful, and much more enjoyable to use.

There is a lot to love:

• It’s large but thin–1/2”—and light–1.5 lbs.
• Instant on. No multi-minute Windows warm up wait.
• From the get go, every iPhone application will run unchanged on the iPad
• Users can buy books in full-color from the iBook store which uses the open eBook standard. It will be easy for authors to get their books onto the iPad.
• You can read Kindle books in a nice large size with your Kindle iPhone app.
• You can keep and share all your music, pictures, and videos from your iPod or iPhone.
• You can browse the iTunes store for music, video, and apps.
• You will be able to access customized information products such as the NY Times.
• You can draw and diagram to your heart’s content on a nice, large screen.
• You can easily connect a real keyboard if you want or use a comfortably sized virtual keyboard.
• You have a choice of WIFI only (plenty for many users) or the addition of high-speed 3G internet connectivity.

What’s missing and does it matter?

• No native phone, although you can use Skype or other internet phone software.
• No camera, but you can easily download pix to the iPad from your real camera or camera-enabled smart phone.

I believe that Apple has gotten the iPad just right and that Apple will dominate the heart of an exploding market for tablet computers where every other tablet pretender will be compared for better or for worse to the iPad.

For content marketers who are increasingly focusing on social and mobile media, the iPad offers loads of enticing possibilities to be newly relevant and compelling to a very active group enthusiasts.  Be there or be very square.

Postscript:

Yes, I will be pre-ordering mine on March 12.  And, no, the Newton wasn’t named after me.

Stand Out from the Marketing Crowd

Thanks to Lou Bortone, video marketing guru for this guest post

In an over-crowded and hyper-competitive marketplace, video marketing can help you break through the clutter and deliver your message in a powerful and memorable way. Thanks to YouTube, and inexpensive, easy-to-use camera options like webcams, Flip Video cameras and iPhones, online video is now well within the grasp of just about anyone.

However, just because creating video is more accessible than ever, that doesn’t mean we all know how or where to use it. As with any marketing tool, you’ve got to start with your goals for video. Your video marketing objectives may include greater visibility, enhanced credibility or expert status, higher search engine rankings, increased brand awareness or all of the above!

By beginning with the end in mind, you can decide on how best to use your video to achieve your objectives. To give you some ideas for diving in, here are ten great ways to use online video:

1. Put a “welcome” video on your website – Engage your web visitors the moment they arrive on your home page with a brief welcome message. Let your prospects see that there’s a real person behind your company. This can establish an immediate connection and quickly build trust and rapport.
2. Record and post client video testimonials – Don’t leave home without your Flip cam – or any portable camera that you can take to events and conferences. Use networking opportunities to tape brief client or colleague testimonials. Video testimonials are far more powerful than text alone.
3. Produce a “Quick Tips” series for YouTube – By posting video tips, you’re enhancing your expert status within your niche, and establishing yourself as the “go-to” person for your specialty.
4. Create video tutorials to demonstrate your products or services – These training videos don’t have to be elaborate. Just look at the success of the simple, but compelling “In Plain English” series done by the folks at CommonCraft using only paper cut-outs. Use Camtasia, Jing or even PowerPoint to bring your tutorials to life.
5. Place a “pitch” video on your sales web page – Online marketers who depend heavily on sales pages are facing challenges engaging visitors and maintaining their attention. Putting a video front and center on your sales page and can break through and deliver your message in a much more compelling way.
6. Launch a live webcast with Ustream.tv or TinyChat.com – Web resources like Ustream.tv make it very easy (and surprisingly low-tech) for anyone with a webcam to create their own TV channel on the web.
7. Tape your event or speaking engagement – Weather you’re a speaker, author or occasional guest panelist, be sure to tape your live event so you can use it as a demo video on your website. Later, you can repackage the content as a CD or DVD product for sale.
8. Start Vlogging – If you’re doing regular blog posts (and you should be!) switch things up with an occasional video blog or “vlog” post.
9. Send a Video Press Release – Because video releases are still relatively novel, you can really get attention and get past gatekeepers by sending a video message instead of, or in addition to, a traditional press release.
10. Create an “instant” photo/video montage – This may be the lowest hanging fruit of all the video production options. You can use “done for you” video sites such as Animoto.com or OneTrueMedia.com to create professional videos using just photos, music and text. I use OneTrueMedia often to create holiday video cards, birthday video cards and more!

Whatever way you choose to use online video, the important thing is to get started. It’s never been easier and – if you want to stay top of mind with your customers – it’s never been more important!

Check out Lou’s informative video below:

Lou Bortone is a long-time marketing consultant and branding coach who helps entrepreneurs build breakthrough brands on the Internet. As an online video branding specialist and award-winning marketer, Lou provides services such as video production, brand development coaching, creative support and video coaching.

Lou is a former television executive who worked for E! Entertainment Television and later served as the Senior Vice President of Marketing & Advertising for Fox Family Worldwide, a division of Fox in Los Angeles. Lou is an author and ghostwriter of six business books, a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach and a Book Yourself Solid Certified Coach. His website is at: http://www.OnlineVideoBranding.com.