soulati.com

Digital Marketing Strategy, PR and Messaging

Soulati-'TUDE!

Who’s Monetizing Online?

By

happy-sad-mask.jpgEvery day another someone from a really cool company, blog, blogging community, organization, or other network asks me to write for them, speak to them, brainstorm about the exchange of content, consider paying a fee to join a network, or hawk a product pitched from the far reaches of Russia and India.

And, I rarely say no because who knows what doors may open as a result of that opportunity?

What’s happening is my stretch is thinning dangerously. The offers are ubiquitous, and as a starter, I’m jazzed about what’s new and next. They say a sucker is born every minute; perhaps you’re reading one right now.

But, I can’t think like that. What I’m doing by accommodating most everyone’s requests is building a brand that appears to be #RockHot solid, so I’m told. It feels that way to me, as well. And, here’s the elusive question:

Who’s Monetizing?

The answer is…few.

  • My friend Tim Bonner, a UK stay-at-home dad, informed me recently he made $300 on his niche site. Not sure what he’s hawking, but I informed him in a tweet I was envious. I’ve also watched his meteoric rise from being a sometime daddy blogger to a snappy smart tech geek blogger who experiments with Google do-not-follow links and writes about it. Awesome.
  • I know my friend Jon Buscall, CEO of Jontus Media in Sweden, is an extraordinarily busy podcaster and dad to a gazillion Basset hounds. He has earned cash recommending podcasting equipment and selling it via an Amazon affiliate program.
  • In that same program, I made about $10 once, and I also was pitched to run a blog post on another blog for $75. My first book, Writing with Verve on the Blogging Journey (you can buy it on Kindle for $3.95), is a collection of blog posts about my favorite topic of blogging brought in $85 from the publisher (who took a cut after Amazon took a cut). That’s truly the extent of my monetization.
  • I know that SpinSucks Pro requires membership, and really good content is sold to folks on SpinSucks. People can register or buy into a webinar for $50 to hear professional speakers on professional topics. Good on them.

But, I want to know who’s truly monetizing huge?

All of the peeps above come from the content/traditional marketing and PR realm. The ability to monetize takes knowledge of API and back ends, building and programming of websites, addition of shopping carts and management of digital marketing calls to action, forms and landing pages.

Do you have all that knowledge under your hat?

Nope, didn’t think so.

The Conundrum of Monetization

That’s the conundrum of late. We who can develop the substance and slap a price tag on it need the techies to join the team and figure out the platform on which to sell the products. Recall I said Tim Bonner earned money on his “niche” site.

What that means is Tim found a specialty topic or product, developed a new site oriented to that product and began to sell. His earning potential is in its earliest stages; however, he’s found the methodology and hopefully the product to keep on with residual income.

Digital Marketing Is An Answer

I see many of these passive income bloggers who started way early building an email list. Their lists are massive of trusting individuals who came to their site for some reason or another. When another product is hawked, that list of trustworthy and hopefully loyal community members are more inclined to make a second purchase. All of a sudden, that network of thousands is buying everything hawked by that trusted figurehead.

To make this happen, you need knowledge of digital marketing; inbound marketing as HubSpot calls it. I’ve been in HubSpot school all year. As a solopreneur, the ability to do it all is daunting; the time and knowledge and effort it takes to learn new things is terribly exciting, however extremely fatal to making a living the traditional way – with a handshake and results-driven pure work on behalf of a client.

Monetization Requires A Team

I’ve come to realize I don’t have what it takes to monetize alone. I need to build a team with a tech pro who can help program a site (a simple WordPress site is all we need), a digital marketer who can manage and nurture the list, design the calls to action and add them as widgets in the sidebar of the site, write the landing pages, and consult on that back-end of the site.

The most critical part of the team is one who builds the products and content to bring in the cash. That’s me. If I could free myself up to truly concentrate on product development and trust my team was standing by to facilitate their ends of the triangle, we’d be golden.

So, who’s on board?

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Target Buyer Persona When Writing

By

mona-lisa-cubs-soulati.jpgWhen you invest in digital marketing school via HubSpot, as I have, what you’re told out of the gate is to know your buyer persona. Now that I understand that phrase better, it makes perfect sense. Quite simply, you need to understand the characteristics and demographic of the person most likely to hire your services.

Define Buyer Persona

What’s not as simple as defining buyer persona is writing to meet those criteria every day. To get there, you have to take a hard, introspective look:

What is your purpose writing blog posts every day, three times weekly or once per week?

If, when you look at a blank screen and see only obligation and weariness, then perhaps your spark for blogging has dimmed.

Instead of looking inward at only you, think about your audience. But, first, think about your business goals.

Bloggers have two paths to take when taking up the virtual pen:

  • Be a personal blogger and write to share about families, travel, school, emotion, etc.
  • Become a professional blogger where content is king and drives your business ROI.

It’s not easy making the leap. When a blogger writes solid and educational content with genuine authority on a highly consistent basis, that’s when things begin to happen.

Write For An Unknown Audience

How do you get there from here? You put yourself in the shoes of your buyer, reader, customer, prospect. What sorts of writing do you think your unknown audience wants from you?

You need to be developing #RockHot content every day; it’s imperative to ensure you’re climbing the rungs of the never-ending ladder.
Each of us who has been blogging more than three years consistently and has a goal to optimize a blog for monetization (the elusive), knows there’s a steep learning curve to the next plateau. To differentiate, it’s up to you to deliver content oriented to the reader you have never met.

The content you craft has to answer the question, “Does this blog post entice a total stranger to pay attention to my writing?”
Let’s get back to the buyer persona thing for a minute. In my view, keeping my target audience top of mind when blogging is a challenge. I have an incredible community built over time who are at varying stages of business success, who are personal friends, who are bloggers, who are business owners, and who are not likely to hire my services.

Here’s the rub…for all the people you know in your community, there are five handfuls of people you don’t know. It is these lurkers and occasional readers whom you want to lure back every day you post content.

If you’ve determined the characteristics and demographics of that occasional reader and defined your buyer persona, then perhaps the content you craft for your blog can be tailored to that group of people.

Switching gears to write for the buyer is a challenge for me.

Everything I read, every conversation I have, and each time I listen provides blog fodder for me. Because I want to teach and share my passion and enthusiasm for what I do, writing content to earn new business is where I struggle.

I’m working on it; trying to make the total leap to being a solidly successful business blogger who is regarded for authoritative content. Right now, the rocky path I’m on is exactly right. No one said a learning curve is without a detour, and I need to keep reminding myself that it’s OK to stay true to your school.

What about you…any hot tips to share about why you blog and how you regard your audience?

Speaking And Presenting Are Brand Builders

By

jayme-soulati-author.jpg

Jayme Soulati holds her new book prior to presenting at New South Digital Marketing Conference

Nothing new in this headline, right? I mean, everyone must be aware that speaking to audiences of your peers with a presentation that is #RockHot is good for the brand.

Joining a panel as a speaker or being a presenter on a local, regional or national scale do not happen overnight. In fact, it may never happen; some are confined to quarters listening to others in webinars, on podcasts, on YouTube or during Google+ Hang Outs.

That’s OK, too, for every speaker needs an audience.

So, please join me in these two locales and venues as I ply my speaker skills and delight you (I have solid expectations!) with creative insight:

IABC Kentucky & Louisville Digital Marketing Association

On September 10, 2013, I will take the dais at the2013 Integrated Marketing Summit hosted by IABC Louisville and the Louisville Digital Marketing Association.

The best news is about who else you can expect to hear:

Jason Falls, himself a maven (can guys be mavens?) across the great divide of social and digital marketing is the master of ceremonies, the emcee, the guy who put us all together.
I’ve been cursing Jason a lot of late as I attempt to build my deck. He assigned me a topic that is sure to give you pause as it has given me paws.

Jason said, “Jayme, you’re going to speak on how social media integrates across all the marketing channels.” Say what??

And, so the heavy duty thinking began with a new title,

Savvier Social Media Across Blended Marketing.

Please do drive or fly to Louisville for this meeting. It’s not going to be the customary “everyone has to jump on the social media train;” it’s going to be about how marketers can better apply social media throughout integrated disciplines and break down the marketing silos.

Here’s the link with all the deets. With the demise of Social Slam in 2014, this conference is a good one to consider as a replacement. The location is central, the price is right, and ohmygoodness, you’re getting PR Rock Stars in the flesh!

Join Me At ConvergeSouth

Here’s what happens when you write a book, you get invited to present in front of some really cool audiences about the topics you love to write about. At ConvergeSouth October 11, 2013 in Greensboro, NC, I am keynoting the content marketing track.

By now, you know how much I love to generate original content that is #RockHot with more ideas you can shake a stick at. There is no lack of blog or landing page fodder in this house, and I want to share that passion and verve for content with you when I present:

Community Is King; Content Is Queen

Yes, I’m dethroning the “content is king” mantra. I’m getting tired of hearing it for the last 18 months. You know who really deserves the new title, right? It’s you; this community. Without a community or loyal followers, readers and lurkers no social media strategy can be successful.
Put that in your crown and ponder!

Join Jayme Soulati

IABC Kentucky & Louisville Digital Marketing Association, Sept. 10, 2013, Louisville
ConvergeSouth, October 11, 2013, Greensboro, NC

New Gender Marketing With Oakley And Ruffles

By

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Advertising Age hasn’t inspired too much blog fodder of late; perhaps it’s due to its new ugly format and thin reporting. It was too serendipitous, though, that in the June 3, 2013 issue two stories about gender marketing with men and Ruffles and women and Oakley appeared pages apart. 

Which got me thinking (always dangerous). 

Why do brands continue to have gender marketing challenges in this day and age? You know, the era of women’s equality, stay-at-home dads, paternity time, and breaking the glass ceiling, etc.?

Oakley Trying To Sun Glass Women

The sub-head of the story really surmises the irony of this brand’s challenges, “At the $1 billion (yes, billion) apparel and eye glass company, the women’s business accounts for just 10% of sales, making it the biggest opportunity.” (Read that again without gasping, really?)

Apparently, the brand has attempted to sell to women but has obviously failed. No women were managing teams; they were in product development roles instead. Pink became the predominant color of choice for the women’s line because male leadership thought every woman identified with that. Few women were positioned in leadership ranks and testosterone prevailed in the male-dominated company. 

Same-sex companies targeting same-sex customers does not beget inter-gender marketing success; I guess Oakley found that out.

Hmm, I wonder if Proctor and Gamble has noticed a trend for Daddy Mamas and is redoing diaper branding to make the box more manly?

 

Ruffles Women And The Bro Code

Ruffles, the potato chip with ridges, has always been a family brand – moms buy and the family eats. Getting too family for its britches, brand marketers sent a team of women into bars to immerse in the male snack-food psyche and crack the bro code. Men, who are too close to men, couldn’t master such research due to the introspectiveness of that analysis (or some such).

For three years (wow), the women infiltrated the snack-food brotherhood and learned a lot that resulted in these adjustments to the lowly potato chip with ridges:

  • Men shop for junk food on impulse; 25% of chips are purchased in smaller sizes. 
  • The brand began to target millennial men.
  • Packaging was redone with inspiration fueled strictly with testosterone.
  • A spokesman the likes of Ron Burgundy meshed with Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood (how the heck are they millennial inspiration?) was created, named Ruff McThickridge.
  • The Ultimate Ruffle was born with thicker, manly ridges along with Ruffles Max to go alongside the beer (not so heavy).
  • Flavors were beefier and included beer-battered onion rings.

What’s so astonishing is the longevity of both these brands. Oakley is 38-years-old and Ruffles has to be older than that. How is it that this kind of eye-opening gender marketing research is happening now? 

So glad it is, as I pity the poor man who can’t have a potato chip because the packaging is too girly. As for my sunglasses? I think I’ll settle for my Prada. Goodness knows those Oakley wraparounds would totally interfere with my curls. 

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Always Publish An E-Book, Too

By

Self-publishing a book in whichever format comes first is a wonderfully tedious, exciting, disturbing, and mind-boggling experience. I know this to be true because I just did it — with many trials, tribs and nail-biting.

Today, I’m so pleased to present:

If you download the e-book, and find you just can’t live without the soft-cover to hold in your hand, you can get this .

There’s an entire system of pricing you have to consider when setting yours. Because I used a hybrid publisher, they get a portion of every sale and so does Amazon. Hopefully, your first book is an experiment in the discovery of the process and not a get-rich-quick scheme (‘cuz I hate to break it to ya, that ain’t gonna happen).

My Biggest Mistake

I was so hell bent on publishing the manuscript for the soft cover to debut mid-April at the that I neglected the e-book.

I was exhausted after writing the book, proofing, fixing, proofing, seeing comps, building a presentation deck, traveling, and ohmygosh where did the time go…that I put aside that e-book.

When I went to tackle it, apparently, I couldn’t add the hyperlinks to the hard copy template. Something about InDesign vs. Mobi files…?

So, I created a spreadsheet with 40 hyperlinks that needed to go into the document on a respective page on a respective line and for a respective word phrase.

After two weeks, I got a file to proof and check those 40 links, and then I got another file and then I got another file to check those 40 links. So, if your analytics shows me pinging  your blog for two seconds, you’ll know why — Jon Buscall, Danny Brown, Dino Dogan, Gini Dietrich, Adam Toporek, The Jack, New England Multimedia, Ralph Dopping, Kaarina Dillabough, Laura Click, Erica Allison, Fire Pole Marketing, 12Most.com., Steamfeed, and others.

My Best Move

Embarking on self-publishing is a mine field. Just hook into any thread on a LinkedIn Group or Google+ Community oriented to the topic, and your head will spin. There are about 24 gazillion pieces of software you can use to publish, and if you’re just an author/content marketer as I am, you’ll drown choosing the right fork in the river.

That’s why using was the best move I made. As a hybrid publisher, they help you with any aspect of the self-publishing journey from proofing/editing, designing the layout and cover, publishing the e-book, adding a QR code, and printing the hard copy. It even has a storefront on its website featuring a variety of little known authors writing on a breadth of topics.

Interested in working with a publisher like this? Try them; see my interview right here. David Braughler is top dog in my book.

And, speaking of “my book,” Thank you, world, for waiting patiently as I schooled myself in the self-publishing arena. A special shout out to who ALWAYS supports, shares and ‘raderies moi and Roho, aka , for that awesome review of this book.

Related articles