Marketing automation has seen an increased rate of adoption over the last couple of years. While most companies are already using automation software in their sales and CRM processes, social media marketing automation is also seeing an upward trend. With new tools launched ever so often, picking one for your business’ needs isn’t always a very straight-forward decision. That said, some tools are just so simple and easy to use, you almost immediately see their value – case in point, DrumUp.
DrumUp is a neat social media management and content curation tool that can help you significantly cut down the amount of time you invest in platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The tool, which is currently available as a web app and an android app, uses sophisticated Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to recommend and schedule custom content for social media based on your keyword inputs.
Making the most of your social media presence with DrumUp
Setting up your account on DrumUp will only take you a few seconds, really. All you have to do is log in with your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account. On the Settings page update all the fields like in the screenshot below:
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As you can see, I’ve used a whole bunch of keywords to ensure that I get a wide variety of content suggestions. And since there isn’t a limit on the number of keywords you add, you can do the same to cover any, or all of the topics relevant to your business. Also note that you can set different keywords on each account you link to the tool. When you share content related to varied topics across multiple accounts, you give your audience an incentive to follow you on all of them.
The one feature I love on DrumUp is Negative Keywords. This allows you to filter out all the content you’re sure you don’t want to be sharing. For instance, you could enter names of your competitors in this field if you don’t want to be sharing content that mentions them. You can also use Negative Keywords to filter out generally sensitive topics like religion and politics.
Tip: When I first started using DrumUp, their keyword guide was useful in helping me pick the right keywords for my accounts.
Once you’ve updated all the fields on the Setting page, just head over to the ‘Recommended’ tab where you can see all the content recommendations for a particular account.
To schedule a recommendation for posting simply click on the ‘Schedule’ button, and it’ll get added to the ‘Queue’. The ideal posting time is automatically chosen by the tool to ensure that all your posts get maximum exposure. However, you do have the option to pick any other date/time you think would work better for you. To do this, just click on the calendar icon and pick the date /time of your choice. You can also edit a scheduled post, add blog feeds, and create your own custom posts.
Content discovery made easy with the DrumUp Chrome Plugin
Apart from the web app and android app, DrumUp is also available as an extension for Chrome. I find it super-handy in discovering content related to the stuff I’m already reading. What’s cool is that I can schedule posts straight from the extension. So, rather than just curating posts from the content recommendations within the app, I’m also able to easily discover and schedule content for sharing whenever I’m browsing the Internet.
The app and the extension make a powerful combination, because the app lets me focus on specific keywords and easily find content related to them, and the extension makes sure that I’m not limited by my keywords by allowing me to schedule and share any content I find interesting on the web.
Wrapping up – what’s great and what’s not
All in all, DrumUp’s a great tool if you intend to leverage social media marketing for your personal accounts and/or your business accounts. It has surely helped me grow my following on Twitter, which is my preferred platform. But it works just as well for Facebook and LinkedIn too.
However, there’s no denying that it’s still in its nascent stages of development and it lacks several advanced features that could make it an even more awesome tool. I’d love to see them add analytics so I can track the performance of my posts. It would have also helped if I were able to schedule posts to my groups, which I have a tough time keeping up with. Anyway, I’d still recommend it highly for its ease of use and bang-on content recommendations. And if those are your primary needs, you should definitely try it out.
Author Bio:
Vasudha Veeranna works with Godot Media and specializes in content marketing and social media marketing. Apart from trying out new tools that improve efficiency, she enjoys travel and music.
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.
Happy New Year! As we pack up our holiday celebrations and look forward to new business strategies, consider this one of the most important pieces of content to integrate into your plans. Our friends at Social Media Examiner have given us social media marketingpredictions for 2016. They rallied 14 leading experts to advise us of upcoming changes to watch and be prepared for in 2016.
I especially like Peg Fitzpatrick’s Prediction, which gives online marketers a recipe for posting valuable content. By following her recipe, you will connect your online assets and dramatically increase your social influence, as well as your pagerank. This approach gives your content a serious competitive advantage to show up on Google’s first page:
Visuals Customized By Platform Become Critical
Peg Fitzpatrick
“Visual marketing will continue to grow in 2016, making it absolutely necessary for brands to have a solid plan for visuals including multimedia such as long- and short-form video for YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, as well as graphics for blog content.
“Creating anchor content for your website and breaking it into contextual pieces to natively post to each platform will be essential. For example, one long video will be embedded into a blog post, tweeted with graphics, and a tip from it will be shared as a graphic on Instagram and a Pinterest quote. These will all lead to the blog content”
More Expert Predictions for 2016
Here are 6 more snippets of the 14 expert predictions from the Social Media Examiner’s blog post:
“The most valuable social media interactions will happen in private, controlled spaces.” By Mitch Joel, president of Mirum (formerly Twist Image), the author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete.
“A year from now, your tweets won’t appear in the streams of all of your followers. Organic reach will be throttled, Facebook-style, but you’ll have plenty of options to boost the visibility for a small price.” By Andy Crestodina, a co-founder of Orbit Media.
“More social networks will start charging for traffic. Their algorithms are continually becoming harder to leverage via organic means, so if you want maximum traffic you’ll have to spend money on ads.” By Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics, blogs at NeilPatel.com.
“2016 will be the year where more companies implement adaptive social. The more we engage and collaborate with external and internal social media users for business, the more we need to adapt to their communities and needs for ultimate success.” By Neal Schaffer, the founder of the Social Tools Summit, the Social Media Center of Excellence, Maximize Social Business and author of Maximize Your Social.
“Brands will need an image strategy that works across their primary platforms, tailored for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Tools like Canva for Work and Relay allow brands to quickly and easily create a suite of images.” By Donna Moritz, the founder of Socially Sorted.
“We’ll see the wide-scale adoption of cost-effective virtual reality devices that will enable fully immersive 3D experiences that are live. Much of this will be enabled by low-cost 360 cameras like the Ricoh Theta, combined with economical devices like Google Cardboard that transform the smartphones everyone already owns into a virtual reality device. This represents an entirely new opportunity for marketers to give factory tours and any other form of in-person experience imaginable.” By Michael Stelzner, the founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner and hosts the popular Social Media Marketing podcast.
Read the rest of these stellar predictions – and position yourself to be a leader online in 2016.
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.
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About Lisa M. Chapman:
Lisa Chapman helps company leaders define, plan and achieve their goals, both online and offline. After 25+ years as an entrepreneur, she is now a business and marketing consultant, business planning consultant and social media consultant. Online, she works with clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa (at) LisaChapman (dot) com. Her book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is available at:
Note to Self: Organize my social media management.
But how?This article delivers the best tools for you to organize and incorporate efficiencies in your social media marketing in 2016. Whew – what a relief!
Effective, efficient social media management is crucial to having a solid social media marketing strategy. If you are a social media manager, you probably already know the importance of having management tools, and this trend is growing increasingly.
The tools you use can help you achieve a number of tasks like content discovery, content scheduling, and social media monitoring. You can gain more followers, increase engagement and of course grow your business by using the right social media management tools.
There is a large variety of tools that can help you manage your social media accounts. Let’s dive in to see what some of these tools can help you accomplish.
Talkwalker
Talkwalker is a powerful social media monitoring tool and has advanced big data crawling capabilities. In fact, Talkwalker’s search index covers over 150 million sources in several different languages. If you are using Talkwalker, you simply need to specify your brand, any related topics that you would like to track and your competitors. Talkwalker gives you upto 100 influencers for any project that you might be working on and also for various media types.
Even though Talkwalker is quite an advanced tool in what it offers, it is quite easy to use and is very user-friendly. You will not have to go through any type of training to understand how the tool works.
The process of analysis is quick and the tool’s search engine allows rapid searches which sift through millions of data sources. You can control the findings and receive multiple combinations of results that are based on your findings. Also, the tool lets you create custom templates for daily, weekly, or monthly reports.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck is a great tool for beginners who are trying to manage their Twitter account. Twitter can be overwhelming sometimes with posts moving by really quickly. You can never be sure if you have tapped into every opportunity possible on Twitter. With TweetDeck, you can search for various keywords and easily spot conversations where you or your brand is being talked about.
TweetDeck even lets you monitor hashtags and also lets you add multiple accounts if that is something you require.
DrumUp
DrumUp is a stylish social media management tool that can completely take over your social media activities for you. The tool can help you curate content that aligns with your business. You can input specific keywords in the settings page of the tool. For example, if your business deals with real estate you can specify keywords like residential/commercial real estate, home ownership, property investment etc.
The tool will provide relevant story recommendations and if you would like to narrow down your search even further, you can add negative keywords as well. DrumUp gives you the freshest content recommendation on the web and is a great alternative to other curation tools.
Most of all, it lets you schedule and share your newly discovered content on various social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It even lets you create custom posts that you can schedule at a desired time.
Mention
As important as it is to create and curate content for your social media pages, it is also important to understand the impact your content is making on social media. With Mention, you can get an overview of your brand and track the overall performance of your social media marketing strategy. All you need to do is put in brand-related keywords into the tool, and you can find out the number of times your brand has been mentioned.
Mention also sends across real-time alerts whenever there is a mention of your brand and you can find out if the mentions are positive, neutral or negative. This way you can keep an eye on your brand’s online reputation and fix any potential damages if necessary.
Pocket
Similar to Instapaper, Pocket is also a bookmarking tool that allows you to save links to blog posts, articles, videos and more. The tool currently has over 17 million users and has been picked up really well by audiences.
Once a link is saved on Pocket, it automatically gets saved on your phone, computer or your tablet, which means you can access your links across all platforms. More importantly, the saved links can be accessed even when you are offline. If you like an article on Twitter or any other similar application, Pocket lets you save links directly from these applications so you don’t have to look it up on your browser and then save.
Feedly
Content hunting days are finally over! The Feedly Reader is an amazing tool if you need to find content in a short period of time. With the News Reader by Feedly, you can add feeds from various blogs and websites and the content will stream right through to your reader. You can set up several categories like food, travel, marketing, social media, photography and more. Once the content starts streaming in, Feedly organizes it neatly into categories.
Using Feedly, you can share the content on Facebook, Twitter or your LinkedIn pages. However, it does not give you the option to schedule the content. If you have particular topics of interest, these are marked with hashtags so that they can be easily discovered later on. Also, the content on Feedly comes from high-authority sources so you can be rest assured that it is good quality content.
Social Mention
Social Mention, a real-time search platform, tracks over a hundred social media websites to help you monitor your brand and how it is being talked about. It is a great listening tool as it provides in-depth analysis of data and measures influence using four different categories. These categories are passion, strength, reach and sentiment. Getting started is simple, and all you have to do is enter your website’s or your product name and it can gather results for you. These results can be used to judge your brand’s impact.
Instapaper
A bookmarking tool can always make life easy. However, Instapaper can offer much more than just a bookmarking service. If you are one of those people who stumble upon some great articles but don’t get time to read them at the same time, Instapaper is a tool you should definitely add to your toolbox. This tool can save links for you so that you can come back to them, when there is more time on your hands.
If while reading you come across parts that are interesting, you can highlight and add comments to the particular paragraph so you can remember it the next time.
Followerwonk
If Twitter analytics is something you are interested in, Followerwonk is a must have. It is the best tool to help you optimize your visibility online and boost your social media growth. The tool allows you to compare and contrast your social graph to other competing brands to see how your brand is doing and what you can do to improve your marketing strategies.
Followerwonk also makes influencer marketing really simple by letting you search Twitter bios and categorize them by location, number of followers, overall influence and more. It also provides rankings for influencers which can help you make marketing related decisions as well.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is probably the easiest tool you can work with if you are just starting out with analytics. The set up is super easy and once it’s done, you can start monitoring websites for engaging content and also look for brand mentions. You will have to enter specific keywords related to what you want to monitor, and Google Alerts will send you real-time alerts once it finds a match. The best part is that you can receive these alerts in your email and you can set it up so that every time there is a new source mentioning your brand, Google Alert will notify you right away.
If you are a content marketer, you can keep track of trending topics that are popping up so you can create around it. This way, there is a higher chance of the content getting picked up quickly by your audience.
In Summary
There are a lot of tasks that make up social media management. You need to create and curate content for your social media accounts, publish the content at the right time and of course track the impact that your content has on social media. The above-mentioned tools can surely make those tasks a little easier for you while letting you get the most audience engagement as you can!
Author Bio:
Aditi Prakash is a blogger at Godot Media, a leading blog writing services firm. She writes extensively on content marketing and social media marketing. She also has numerous guest posts on various other blogs.
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.
As noted in the previous content (Part One), an Action Plan is extremely detailed. It has to communicate and justify its proposal, strategy, and design. We described the initial outline of an ‘Action Plan’, as having the following material:
Acknowledgements – Listing the key players up front.
Table of Contents – Denoting the breakdown and location of the content.
Executive Summary – Providing a short but concise explanation of the action plan.
Introduction – Providing the overview and reasons behind the plan.
Overview – Describing in detail what is needed, who is affected, the definitions needed to be understood, and the approach taken to derive the findings.
After the above sections, we can now structure the document as follows:
Goals
Note the goals and strategy of the ‘Action Plan’
Beginning – Describe how the plan will be initiated; the ‘why’, and the reasoning behind it. List all stakeholders and target audiences affected and any required agreements. Describe new policies and roles created; including any amendments.
Building a team – Describe how a team will be formed; include partnerships and task forces.
Building the infrastructure – Describe how the new organization will function.
Setting the groundwork – Describe how to achieve the goal; include project schedule, resources, budgets, and any new standards or programs. Include everything that will be affected.
Preparing the population or audience – Describe how the target audience will be notified and what education is required for understanding functionality and requirements, i.e., through meetings and seminars. Include how to measure the audience reaction and ROI, i.e., through voting or analysis.
Benefits
Note all benefits of the plan.
State why the plan is needed, i.e., how it fills a void, or how it solves a persistent problem.
List the benefits. For example, state how the client, organization, or target audience can function more efficiently, gain more momentum, or reap more rewards, such as decreased productivity costs, better communication between employees, more security, or providing advantages of a new product, application, or process.
Cost
Note the budget involved.
State how the proposal will be accomplished within a budget. List future and current costs involved.
List all financing and loans, such as where funds will be used, found, and the maximum budgeting involved, as well as grants, third party financing, etc.
Note the tools that will be used to complete the project on schedule and what might be needed if the project lasts longer. Note down critical milestones.
Reporting
Note the required reports.
Generate reports on the project status and its budget. Describe possible bottlenecks and problems, such as ‘What if it doesn’t work’, or ‘limitations if not completely accomplished’ and any unexpected issues.
Provide analysis on ‘should wok be done a step at a time or go full force’ and ‘complete within x number of years, months, etc.’
Hope this has been helpful. As with any documentation, be precise and accurate. If you have previously created an action plan, please add to this content. Thank you.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to social media marketing, a picture could be worth a thousand likes or comments. Adding an image to your blog post or a social media post can instantly catch the attention of your audience and draw them to your posts. Social media networks are increasingly becoming very photo-centric with the rise of networks like Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr.
Why do visitors flock to these websites? It’s because they provide a lot of eye-candy and a welcome change from all the textual content that visitors might generally encounter on other networks. However, when you do add images to your posts, be very careful with image licenses and attribution formats. The last thing you want is to run into a legal hassle for using a copyrighted image, and lose a lot of money that you could have instead put to good use.
Finding free-to-use images
If you are searching for free-to-use images using Google Advanced Image Search, you can actually specify the type of image that you require through Google’s advanced search option. When you type in your search, use the drop down menu on the row entitled, “Usage Rights” to choose the kind of image license you would like to look for.
Types of usage rights:
Free to use or share: Allows you to copy or redistribute its content if the content remains unchanged.
Free to use, share, or modify: Allows you to copy, modify, or redistribute in ways specified in the license.
Commercially: If you want content for commercial use, be sure to select an option that includes the word “commercially.”
However, there is a limitation in the way Google recognizes these licensed images. When you do find the right image, you will want to do some research to make sure that the image is, in fact, free to use. Some images may require you to attribute the source when adding it to your post. Google will not be able to warn you of these requirements, so it’s always better to dig a little deeper yourself.
If you use an image with a usage right “free to use or share” you can use the image and share it with others as long as the image is not modified in any way. However, if the image is under the “free to use, share and modify” right, it allows you to modify the image if necessary. If you wish to use the image for commercial purposes, make sure that you pick an image which contains the word “commercially” in the usage rights.
Picking a copyright free image
If you manage a blog and want to add an image to your posts, start your search by looking up websites that offer free-to-use images. You can also use licensed images, however, these images require appropriate permissions and attributions. There are various websites and stockphoto databases where you will be able to find copyright free images.
Before using any of these images, it’s always wise to double-check the image license so that you can avoid any problems later on.
Websites that offer free-to-use images
Here’s a list of websites that offer free-to-use images.
Life of Pix – This is a website owned by a creative agency, and offers free high-resolution images without any kind of copyright restriction. Every week you will be able to see new images.
Picjumbo – offers high-resolution photos from various categories like weddings, technology, food, people and more. New photos are added to the website on a weekly basis. Images from this website can be used for personal as well as commercial needs.
Pixabay – offers vectors, images as well videos that you can use for free. All the free images that you find on Pixabay are also free of any copyrights and have been filed under Creative Commons CC0.
Freepik – similar to Pixabay, this website also offers vectors, images and icons that can be used for free. You can use the image, however, it is required that you attribute the source of the image in your blog post.
Godot Media Gallery – this gallery by Godot Media allows you to download high-resolution images for free. You can find images from several categories like architecture, business, cityscapes, people and more.
Flickr – On Flickr, you get access to a vast library of images that are categorized under a variety of usage licenses like creative commons, commercial allowed, modifications allowed and more. However, use of these images requires attribution.
StockSnap.io – attractive high-resolution stock photos that are free to use under the Creative Commons CC0 license – no attribution necessary.
Canva – if you are having difficulty finding the right image for your post, you can create one using Canva. Once you are happy with the image that you have created, you can download it and use it on your post.
Free Footage – if you are require video footage for your project or posts, this website will give you a range of free video footage from different categories
Free Video Footage – you can download FREE video footage or audio footage from this website, and it also allows you to use the footage without any attributions.
Author Bio:
Apurva Jog is a Content Writer at DrumUp, a social media management tool. She has penned down several articles related to social media management and content marketing. When she is not writing, she is usually catching up with anything that is trending in the social media sphere.
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.
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About Lisa M. Chapman:
Lisa Chapman helps company leaders define, plan and achieve their goals, both online and offline. After 25+ years as an entrepreneur, she is now a business and marketing consultant, business planning consultant and social media consultant. Online, she works with clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa (at) LisaChapman (dot) com. Her book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is available at:
Books for Social Media Marketing, Book Marketing, Building a Business Online and MORE!
Do you need a great gift for family or a friend who has a dream to build or grow their online business?
Help ignite that fire with awesome books that take you step-by-step through the process – and cut through the clutter.
We are bombarded online with thousands of messages every day. Confusion reigns. But no more! Any of the books below are terrific, on point, and written by the best in their field. You can confidently choose from any of these and know that you have chosen a gift that hits the bullseye and provides tremendous value.
Just click on the Title Link to go straight to the book’s Amazon information page to learn more about it and place your order!
New 2015 edition of the bestselling social media marketing book
Marketing your business through social media isn’t an option these days—it’s absolutely imperative. Inside this bestselling guide, you’ll find out how to apply the marketing savvy you already have to the social media your prospects are using, helping you to reach and keep more customers, make more sales, and boost your bottom line.
Includes updates on the latest changes to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, blogging, and more
Offers tips for showcasing your company with a customized Facebook business page
Presents step-by-step guidance for setting up a social media marketing campaign
Shows you how to use analytics to assess the success of your social media campaign
If you’re a social media strategist, website manager, marketer, publicist, or other employee who is in charge of implementing and managing an organization’s social media strategy, this comprehensive resource is your one-stop guide to all things social media marketing.
Open the book and find:
How to make the business case for social media
Guidance on plotting your social media marketing strategy
Tips for managing your cybersocial campaign
Strategies for getting your content to your prospects
The best ways to leverage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites
Ways to profit from your business presence on social media
Techniques for using social media in mobile environments
About Jan Zimmerman & Deborah Ng
Jan Zimmerman is the owner of Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing and has helped businesses of all sizes use online marketing and social media tools for more than 15 years.
Deborah Ng is a professional blogger, freelance writer, community manager, and social media enthusiast.
How you can make serious money from your fiction or non-fiction book
This book shows you step-by-step how you can enjoy writing, publishing and marketing your book so that it becomes an enduring bestseller. Written by an established and successful international #1 bestselling author (Dee’s second book reached position 150 out of 7 million titles on Amazon and all her books are in the top 100 bestselling books in their category on Amazon several years after being published), Dee sells thousands of books worldwide. You’ll find practical, effective and powerful tools and tips on every page. The author shares her award winning templates including press releases, book launch invitations, speaker biographies and more so you can create yours effortlessly. You’ll find out how you can identify your readers so that your content is appealing and relevant and, your marketing hits the spot every time.
You’ll learn how to market your book on a zero or shoestring budget using social media and traditional marketing to get phenomenal results. You’ll also learn the insider secrets of approaching professional reviewers (shared by a highly esteemed professional reviewer of fiction and non-fiction books) and how to get dozens of genuine five-star reviews on Amazon and other review sites to boost your book sales further still. You’ll also find out how to hold a packed out book launch that costs you nothing. With this book, you’ll understand exactly how you can make serious money from your bestselling book on a step-by-step basis whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction.
About Dee Blick
Dee Blick is a Number 1 bestselling author and a multi-award winning Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Dee has 32 years’ marketing experience gained working with talented individuals and small businesses from all sectors. She is an author who definitely walks her talk having penned three bestsellers on a zero or shoestring budget. Dee is also a professional speaker, invited regularly by global brands to speak at their events as well as to more intimate gatherings of authors where she loves sharing her tips and ideas. Dee is an ambassador for AuthorCraft, which enables authors of all genres to gather, share ideas and inspire one another.
Maybe you’re a first-time novelist looking for practical guidance. Maybe you’ve already been published, but your latest effort is stuck in mid-list limbo. Whatever the case may be, author and literary agent Donald Maass can show you how to take your prose to the next level and write a breakout novel – one that rises out of obscurity and hits the best-seller lists.
Maass details the elements that all breakout novels share – regardless of genre – then shows you writing techniques that can make your own books stand out and succeed in a crowded marketplace.
You’ll learn to:
establish a powerful and sweeping sense of time and place
weave subplots into the main action for a complex, engrossing story
create larger-than-life characters that step right off the page
explore universal themes that will interest a broad audience of readers
sustain a high degree of narrative tension from start to finish
develop an inspired premise that sets your novel apart from the competition
Then, using examples from the recent works of several best-selling authors – including novelist Anne Perry – Maass illustrates methods for upping the ante in every aspect of your novel writing.
You’ll capture the eye of an agent, generate publisher interest and lay the foundation for a promising career!
About Donald Maass
Donald Maass is the author of 17 novels. He works as a literary agent, representing dozens of novelists in the fantasy, crime, mystery, romance, and thriller categories. He speaks at writer’s conferences throughout the USA.
“Launch” is the treasure map into that world—an almost secret world of digital entrepreneurs who create cash-on-demand paydays with their product launches and business launches.
Whether you have an existing business, or you have a service-based business and want to develop your own products so you can leverage your time and your impact, or you’re still in the planning phase—this is how you start fast. This formula is how you engineer massive success.
Now the question is this—are you going to start slow, and fade away from there? Or are you ready for a launch that will change the future of your business and your life?
Review
“This is not just a book. It’s a license to print money. (Okay, maybe I’m overstating it a bit, but not by much.) I used Jeff’s Product Launch Formula to create a seven-figure-plus business I absolutely love. And unlike some successful entrepreneurs, he holds nothing back. It’s all here—a proven strategy, real- world examples, and step-by-step instructions—everything you need to create a business you’re crazy about while making an incredible living doing it.” —Michael Hyatt, New York Times Bestselling Author and Founder of PlatformUniversity.com
About Jeff Walker
Jeff Walker has literally transformed the way stuff is sold online. Along the way he’s become one of the top entrepreneurial and marketing trainers in the world. But it didn’t start out that way…
When Jeff started his first online business, he was a stay-at-home dad taking care of two small children. The “business” was launched from the baby’s changing room – and it started with a free email newsletter sent to 19 people. That was in the Internet Dark Ages of 1996.
After that humble start, Jeff quickly developed an underground process for launching new products and businesses with unprecedented success. But the success-train was just getting started – once he started teaching his formula to other entrepreneurs, the results were simply breathtaking. Tiny, home-based businesses started doing launches that sold tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars in sales with their launches.
The proven entrepreneurial model that breaks all the rules:
Build your audience first. Then create your product.
This is the simple but profoundly successful entrepreneurial approach of one of today’s most creative business minds.
A pioneer of content marketing, Joe Pulizzi has cracked the code when it comes to the power of content in a world where marketers still hold fast to traditional models that no longer work. In Content Inc., he breaks down the business-startup process into six steps, making it simple for you to visualize, launch, and monetize your own business.
These steps are:
The “Sweet Spot”: Identify the intersection of your unique competency and your personal passion
Content Tilting: Determine how you can “tilt” your sweet spot to find a place where little or no competition exists
Building the Base: Establish your number-one channel for disseminating content (blog, podcast, YouTube, etc.)
Harvesting Audience: Use social-media and SEO to convert one-time visitors into long-term subscribers
Diversification: Grow your business by expanding into multiple delivery channels
Monetization: Now that your expertise is established, you can begin charging money for your products or services
This model has worked wonders for Pulizzi and countless other examples detailed in the audiobook. Connect these six pieces like a puzzle, and before you know it you’ll be running your own profitable, scalable business.
Pulizzi walks you step by step through the process based on his own success (and failures) and real-world multimillion-dollar examples from multiple industries and countries.
Whether you’re seeking to start a brand-new business or drive innovation in an existing one, Content Inc. provides everything you need to reverse engineer the traditional entrepreneurial model for better, more sustainable success.
About Joe Pulizzi
Joe Pulizzi is founder of Content Marketing Institute, the leading education and training organization for content marketing, which includes the largest in-person content marketing event in the world, Content Marketing World. Joe is the winner of the 2014 John Caldwell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Content Council. Joe’s third book,Epic Content Marketing was named one of “Five Must Read Business Books of 2013” by Fortune Magazine. If you ever see Joe in person, he’ll be wearing orange.
If you are currently struggling with getting traffic to your website, or converting that traffic when it shows up, you may think you’ve got a traffic or conversion problem. In Russell Brunson’s experience, after working with thousands of businesses, he has found that’s rarely the case. Low traffic and weak conversion numbers are just symptoms of a much greater problem, a problem that’s a little harder to see (that’s the bad news), but a lot easier to fix (that’s the good news). DotComSecrets will give you the marketing funnels and the sales scripts you need to be able to turn on a flood of new leads into your business.
Reviews
“Russell has spent over a decade successfully starting and scaling companies online. This book takes the best of what he’s discovered from over 1,000 unique split tests, tens of millions of visitors online and broken it down into a simple process that ANY company can use to geometrically improve their traffic, conversions and sales online.” — Anthony Robbins
“Russell is not a ‘pretend’ expert, but someone who has actually built one of the most successful businesses I know teaching entrepreneurs how to employ online marketing in their business that achieve exceptional results.” — Bill Glazier
“I sit now, as infrequently as possible, in meetings with young online marketing people demonstrably devoid of any disciplined thinking. They are full of opinion and youthful hubris but very short on facts. I do not want to share a foxhole with them or depend on them. I would risk it with Russell.” — Dan Kennedy
About Russell Brunson
Russell Brunson is a serial entrepreneur who started his first online company while he was wrestling at Boise State University. Within a year of graduating he had sold over a million dollars worth of his own products and services from his basement! For over 10 years now Russell has been starting and scaling companies online. He owns a software company, a supplement company, a coaching company (his successful roster of ‘heavyweight clients’ includes such legends as Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazier). Russell is one of the top super affiliates in the world. DotComSecrets was created to help entrepreneurs around the world to start, promote and grow their companies online.
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For your convenience, I’ve set up segmented bookshelves of top books, authored by Subject matter experts and leading trainers for these categories: Small Business & Entrepreneurship, Marketing & Sales, Marketing, and Web Marketing.Just click on any of the links below to scroll through a diverse selection of books that will ignite any business – and online or offline marketing – for your business or that of a friend:
… with new tools and insights to achieve online business success. Step-by-Step, these are powerful tools.
Happy Holidays!
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.
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About Lisa M. Chapman:
Lisa Chapman helps company leaders define, plan and achieve their goals, both online and offline. After 25+ years as an entrepreneur, she is now a business and marketing consultant, business planning consultant and social media consultant. Online, she works with clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa (at) LisaChapman (dot) com. Her book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is available at:
Take Back Control and Make Better Decisions Online
Have you ever stopped to consider how many hours you spend in front of a computer screen each day? Or how such prolonged computer interaction deeply influences us, especially in subconscious ways?
Most of us may be just too busy to be aware of the visual biases and behavioral patterns that influence us while we absorb and process information on a screen – hour after hour, after day, after week, and so on. The most sophisticated marketers strategically design their content and Calls To Action, and know exactly how to design a web page that leads us to make the decisions they want us to make.
Businesses can influence customers—for better or for worse—by something as simple as how their web or mobile sites are designed, where information is placed, the colors and white space used, and how products are described. Some companies that do this well, while others do it less so well (Amazon is one of the worst!)
Online vs. Offline Decisions
You may be surprised to learn that the choices, decisions and purchases you make online can be very different from the choices you would make offline. Those strategically planned online influences often lead us to make decisions that we might not make offline – even if they are ultimately expensive or harmful.
For instance:
You’re more likely to add bacon to a pizza order if you’re online.
You will probably get lower scores if you take the SAT on a computer.
You might buy an item located on a screen ‘hotspot’, even if better options are available.
You’ll probably overvalue a product you’re considering, if you shop using a touchscreen.
You Can Consciously Make Better Decisions Online
“I have devoted my career to studying the mistakes people make so that we might learn to avoid them.” In his latest game-changing book, Shlomo Benartzi, behavioral economist and UCLA professor, researched and recently published, The Smarter Screen: Surprising Ways to Influence and Improve Online Behavior
His mission is to help individuals make better decisions online.
Benartzi writes about the many ways our brains process information differently on a screen versus in real life, and the impact these differences can have on our buying habits, health, financial planning, and more.
Benefits of THE SMARTER SCREEN
“This book is about how we think on screens” Benartzi summarizes. It’s a book about behavioral solutions and practical tools that can improve our digital lives. Using stories and case studies, we learn how profoundly we are affected, and even further, how to anticipate the marketers’ and designers’ intent.
Benartzi offers specific tools for triggering behavioral attention on screens. We learn how webpage design can make us smarter. And think better – in order to empower our own actions and succumb less to the intended manipulation.
Can THE SMARTER SCREEN initiate meaningful, sustainable change?
Possible Scope of Change – a Billion People?
“… My hope is that we can use the scale of technology to bring more fixes to more people …. using the reach of the digital world to quickly contact vast numbers of people with minimal effort” offers Benartzi. “In fact, influencing behavior on screens can be so efficient and effective that I believe we have a chance to help a billion people think smarter and choose wiser. That’s right: billion. With a b.”
The end result is that we need to update our behavioral toolkit for the digital age. This book will give you the tools you need now, at least if you want to nudge people the right way on screens.
It’s Time Has Arrived
It’s high time that consumers, business workers and the public in general become aware of these powerful and largely manipulative influences in order to make decisions in our own best interest, whether individual or business.
It’s time to raise our awareness, our consciousness, and think more independently on-screen.
An Action Plan is very involved and detailed as it has to justify its proposal, strategy, and design. When you have to perform a task that involves a particular population, how do you communicate and create an action plan? The Technical Writer involved has to have meetings to gather information and as always, with any documentation, create an outline or a mapping depicting what items are associated to one another.
An example of an outline that would need to be created, is as follows:
The Acknowledgements
List the key players up front. List the directors, community, partners, consultants, etc., involved in developing the subject matter. Note down their involvement and participation in creating this plan.
The Table of Contents
Create a Table of Contents denoting the breakdown of the content. Include the location of the Executive Summary, Introduction; Overview, Goals, Benefits, Costs, Future Plans, etc. Include the following:
Figures – list the title and location of diagrams, graphs and charts showing trends, comparison of values, distribution, etc. Be sure to illustrate data points over time periods.
Tables – list the title and location of tables describing events and/or tables that clarify and compare items, facts, figures, etc.
Appendix – list any additional reports, references, or addendum to the action plan.
The Executive Summary
Create a short but concise explanation of the action plan. Include its purpose and note reasons why this report was created. Also include the goal as well as the budget needed to complete the project.
The Introduction
Within the introduction, provide:
Overview of the action plan – an outline giving a rundown of what will be done.
Reason behind the plan – the why and the goal.
The Overview
Create a summary and explain the plan for the population that will be affected. Describe what exists, what is needed, the strategy, and the future outcome.
Definitions – Define terms that need to be clarified, such as explaining the situation that caused the problem or any needed technical explanations.
Current environment – Note what currently exists. Justify the action required. How did this come about? What analysis was done? List all the various types of analysis completed. Next, note what the findings were, and also include any evidence that exists to justify your point.
Approach – State how the conclusion or plan was derived. Get estimates. Note what was checked, such as how did you know what was needed and what was needed to be investigated? Note also what prerequisites, requirements, conditions, and obligations are needed before any action can take place.
Future – State what the future holds. What will happen in the future from this new action? What can affect this change – increased traffic, population, decreasing prices?
Next month, the Goals segment of the action plan will be presented. It is not easy to create an ‘Action Plan’. It is very extensive and a lot of work has to go into its creation.
Hope this beginning section has been most helpful. And, as with any documentation, be precise and exact.
If you have previously created an action plan, please add to this content. Thank you.
Internet Retailer has issued a new industry report covering their predictions for retailers’ and brands’ online spending in 2016. Below, I’ve highlighted some of the points and graphs that are relevant and vitally important to all online retailers, from solopreneurs to major brands.
According to Zak Stambor, Editor of Internet Retailer, “In (our) first-ever digital marketing survey, the results of which are included in this special report, we find that many retailers are boosting their digital ad spending, and they’re spreading those dollars around to a variety of channels. As they do so, they’re also looking for ways to make their messages more relevant to shoppers.”
Image Source: THE NEXT DIGITAL MARKETING WAVE, Internet Retailer
Ads Get Personal
“While digital ad budgets are growing,” Zak says, “marketers still must spend wisely. Increasingly that means tailoring just about every digital marketing campaign to individual shoppers.”
For example, men’s apparel retailer Bonobos Inc. sends a lot of emails, between one and five acquisition and retention messages a day. Email is their main thing. And it is clearly targeted based on segmented email lists.
The segments are based on likelihood of purchasing specific products, colors, styles or sizes.
In 2014, the company ran a test to determine how effective its targeting strategy really was in increasing sales. It sent the same email to two different lists – one email list that was determined to be inclined to buy an item promoted through the email, and one email list that was a completely random cross-section of all undifferentiated email addresses. The result? The segmented list was four times more likely to purchase than the random list.
As a strategy to increase revenues, targeting and retargeting are the focus of Bonobos online ad spend, consistent with other online retailers.
Digital Ad Spending
“And it isn’t just email where retailers are spending more; 66% of respondents increased their overall budgets this year— including 24% of all respondents who boosted their spending more than 20%. That growth continues an ongoing trend. U.S. retailers’ digital ad spending jumped 14.4% last year—from $9.574 billion in 2013 to $10.957 billion,” according to eMarketer Inc., who expects spending to rise another 16.8% this year to $12.802 billion.
IMage Source: THE NEXT DIGITAL MARKETING WAVE, Internet Retailer
The Power of Digital Referrals
According to a recent Nielsen Co. survey, 92% of respondents said they trusted referrals from people they know, and that same study found that shoppers are four times more likely to buy a product when a friend has referred it.
Additionally, the lifetime value of a customer who has been referred by a friend is 16% higher than that of the average customer, according to a University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business report. So why aren’t more retailers deploying customer referral programs? “Retailers have an awareness of referral programs, but there is a lack of clarity around the potential impact of referral on their business,” says Chris Duskin, vice president of marketing at Extole, a referral marketing firm. “Many retailers aren’t yet dialed into the fact that there is a marketing platform for customer referral programs that has the same power that marketing platforms have for search and email, for example. Refer-a-friend isn’t merely a widget or a homegrown effort anymore.”
As more retailers begin to implement digital marketing campaigns that take an integrated multichannel approach, Duskin says they should expand those efforts to include customer referral programs. “Today, many retail marketers are utilizing vast amounts of data to very specifically target their customers,” he says. “That’s where the opportunity lies.”
“To be successful in referral, retailers need to get started quickly, take advantage of the immediate opportunity, and expand to grow the program beyond what most people even realize is possible,” Duskin says. “They need to shift to a ‘customer journey’ way of thinking and fully understand the much more complex relationship they have with their customers today. It’s not as much a challenge as it is an opportunity.”
Image Source: THE NEXT DIGITAL MARKETING WAVE, Internet Retailer
Retargeting
Retargeting consumers across the web via display ads—which 27% of Forrester respondents listed as one of their five top customer acquisition channels—can be one way to stretch a budget because the consumers a retailer is targeting have already expressed interest in a brand’s products, says Courtney Lear Wallace, director of digital marketing and e-commerce at online-only apparel retailer Unique Vintage.
“There’s so much noise out there that you have to be relevant,” she says. “A message that’s based on something a shopper looked at can be incredibly effective.”
This post is courtesy of Internet Retailer and THE NEXT DIGITAL MARKETING WAVE.
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.
.. _____ ..
ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:
Lisa Chapman helps company leaders define, plan and achieve their goals, both online and offline. After 25+ years as an entrepreneur, she is now a business and marketing consultant, business planning consultant and social media consultant. Online, she works with clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa (at) LisaChapman (dot) com. Her book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is available at:
In continuing the topic of business cases, here are some tips on creating a Business Case.
How do you begin to create your business case? A business case justifies the value of a project by defining the goal and scope of the project. It will describe the usefulness of the project and the consequences if the project is not approved.
As with any document that needs to prove a point, research has to be first done and then the findings studied. As previously stated in the prior article (Part One), a business case generally provides a solution to a problem, so include details from meetings of problems that currently exist. Note down all the core requirements gathered from meetings, hands-on work, or practical experience needed to resolve a problem. From your gathered information, you will now know what content needs to be written.
To Begin
Use an outline as a starting point and include a Table of Contents or at minimum an outline of the contents up front.
Break up the outline into logical sections, e.g., Introduction, Research, Problems, Resolution, Recommendation, Strategy and Risks, Costs, Benefits, and Time.
Create an introduction to the project and be specific. State the reason (justification) behind the business case and the goal(s).
Describe the research and findings that were done.
Describe all the problems that currently exist and the solutions that have been derived.
Create a chart if needed, and point out relevant data by highlighting it.
Denote only the important ‘must have’ items within the business case to validate a point.
Include all the data that is needed to prove your case. Numbers are always beneficial to proving a point or making a justification.
For lengthy documents, break it up into sections and include a Table of Contents or break it up into several documents; one for each department or subgroup, and show the relevance for each department or subgroup.
Keep it organized and break it up into subject matter if you need to.
Note the benefits such as ease of use, long term usage, better monitoring, etc. Prove its value.
Provide a cost analysis (if needed) and make it visually appealing and not complex.
Show, e.g., customer satisfaction benefits (if needed) – easier to access information. – saves time and energy.
Describe how to handle marketing and distribution (if needed).
For readability, apply bullets to outline lengthy text or explanations.
Double check your grammar and spelling to ensure the validity of the document.
Remember to communicate well through written material. You have to work as an editor, illustrator, and designer to get your information across.
Once the document is completed, send it to the client and respective project managers for verification and approval. If the document is of considerable length, indicate what sections should be read by which party. As always, write for the intended audience. Make it accurate and precise to prove your point and to get your recommendation approved.
If you have previously written business cases, please add to this content or leave a comment. Thank you.
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“Visual marketing will continue to grow in 2016, making it absolutely necessary for brands to have a solid plan for visuals including multimedia such as long- and short-form video for YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, as well as graphics for blog content.
out Novel 1st (first) edition Text Only
and 
. He has extensive experience applying behavioral economic insights to the real world, having increased the savings rates of millions of Americans through his work with Richard Thaler on Save More Tomorrow, and has advised many government agencies and businesses.
