Danny Brown Archives - Page 2 of 3

We’re Drowning In Marketing

03/04/2013 By Jayme Soulati

It’s daunting being a marketer these days. The lexicon in how we market has widened into an array of confusing methods to attract better brand positioning, growth, ROI, influencer authority, social this and that, and consumer loyalty.

The latest favorite is influencer marketing. Last week on this blog, we took an angular look at Google+, Google Authorship and Influence Marketing.

Buy Influencer Marketing Books

Several books written by peers in my own social circles are must reads to keep us thinking strategically and visionary.

You may pre-order Influence Marketing: How to Create, Manage and Measure Brand Influencers in Social Media Marketing (Que Biz-Tech) written by Danny Brown and Sam Fiorella.

They have been writing it up with a large amount of content on blogs, Google+ Communities, and in comments all over. It promises to be a must-buy and read.

Meanwhile, a dear colleague of mine, Mark W. Schaefer, has written a quick read,Return on Influence, The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing, his second book that has hit the corporate world (IBM recently bought 500 copies) and the social media sector by storm.

Because I know all three of these peeps and vouch for their own cred and influence, you ought to consider purchasing these books for your reading pleasure.

Now, back to the topic at hand…If some marketers think they’re drowning, how does a company cope with that?

Does every marketing team need to know every aspect of marketing, or can they learn in a steady trickle?

The good news is, everyone is in the same boat absorbing knowledge and learning new tactics at the same time. How marketers execute on these evolving techniques is how one differentiates.

Here are my thoughts on how companies should stay the course with these basics and never mind the marketing buzz until prepared to address them head on:

Five Marketing Basics

1. Set up a solid team of people with the right mix of marketing for various types of organizations, someone in PR, another knows email and inbound marketing, a copywriter, a social media enthusiast, and someone familiar with advertising for all media.

2. Assess and solidify brand and dust off that mission statement! It’s critical to revisit this to ensure the company is growing in alignment with founders’ goals and vision.

3. Hire Jayme Soulati (shameless, I know) to do your message mapping exercise. No matter if your company is established or just starting, message mapping charts your company’s communication course.

4. Build a responsive website. I’m not talking about a website that looks good on a mobile device; I’m talking about a scalable site that conforms to smart devices and positions calls to action and contact information on the top of the screen followed by all the rest of the goodies. When your company keeps a website that requires visitors to slide windows back and forth, then the message you’re sending is pretty much, “We just don’t care.”

5. Pay attention to social media and engage already. You have to; you just do. In this post-social media adoption era, there are still companies without the basics in place. Companies owe it to consumers to connect via social media channels. If all we get is a direct mail coupon with no other channel, that is grounds for negative online reputation.

Confused about any of the above? Please ask me, I’m right here.

By Jayme Soulati

SUBSCRIBE AND NEVER MISS A POST!

Google+ Meet Influence Marketing

02/28/2013 By Jayme Soulati

By Jayme Soulati

In developing my piece on Google Authorship, and another one this week on niche networks, I needed a link for the words, “brand evangelist.” What happened in the next three minutes shocked me into writing this piece and made me extremely nervous that Google+ is going to influence influence marketing whether we want it to or not.

The steps that occurred are spelled out here carefully so you can follow along. See what you glean from what I did; do you come to the same conclusion, or not?

My search for “brand evangelist” was returned by Google. I saw a series of Google Plussers who had written a post or piece published on Google+ featuring these key words.
Each of the folks listed were mentioned with their Google Authorship profile. There was a photo as well as the number of people this person had in circles and the number of circles this person was in.
I scrolled down page one of my search on Google to see if I recognized anyone.
Way at bottom, I saw Mack Collier’s name although his Google Authorship information was not included because his post was pre-Google+.
Because I didn’t recognize an author or publication (there were few), I looked more closely at each person’s Google+ profile seeking anything that would help me discern influence.
I saw the quantity of circles each person was in; wouldn’t that mean something? The peep with the highest number of circles would supposedly be more influential, right? And knew what they were talking about? (Remember, this was happening over a minute to find one hyperlink.)
I set out to select the link for the person with the most circles.

Inadvertently, I had just discerned that I would select a hyperlink using someone’s Google+ post content in my blog post based on the quantity of circles associated with that unknown person.

I am agog. I believe strongly that it’s never about quantity; it’s about quality!

I did the exact thing that people complain about Klout for; I associated influence scoring of my own creation and subconscious to determining strength of content and influence.

I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, if I had automatically begun to select someone from a Google search with the highest number of circles, then every other company would be doing the same without a shred of second thought.

What does this mean for how influencers are screened?

Anyone who understands what’s written above understands what I’m getting at…we can hide behind a Klout score because it’s not well-known as an influence metric.

When someone in business plugs in a key word or phrase and watches those with Google Authorship turned on scroll by, then the ones with the most circles wins, right? (Based on what I just experienced first hand, to my utter chagrin.)

One can only hope I’m wrong. Danny Brown, Sam Fiorella, Neal Schaffer? Can you weigh in on this, perhaps?

Today We Reflect And Celebrate

02/13/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Every year on this day exactly (told you my lucky number is 13), reflection is in the air. About what you say? Let me share:

Being In Business. My years as a solopreneur, agency owner, freelancer, dog walker and kid/house sitter have been the most rewarding for healthy spirit. I was working for myself. It was and is up to me how much money I can make and how hard I can work. Being accountable to yourself and whom you hire in business is heady stuff. It requires constant attention, thinking and action. Along the way, there are peeps to meet and relationships to build; there are even folks to care for. That’s what drives me, this being in business stuff. It doesn’t matter how one defines me; if I’m the one determining how money rolls in the door and buying my own health insurance and dropping pennies into a retirement plan, then I’m in business; bona fide.

Being A Single Mom By Choice (In Business). The path I took to motherhood is unlike most other women. It is rewarding and stressful and puts perspective on money-making like you wouldn’t believe. I’m no longer able to squeak by on a dog-walker wage; I have to earn the beau coup bucks for the kidlet. She lends a wonderful purpose to why I get up every day and work to the bone to rinse and repeat. There’s no other way to select the single-mother-by-choice (not without nice $$ luggage, mind you) than to be in business for self. Yet, I have never defined myself as “mother of kidlet;” my identity remains “Jayme Soulati and this is my daughter.”

Social Media. In 2008, I was a single mom in business in a dreary basement not in Chicago with zero friends and negative zero ability to go find them. I was seriously depressed with my place and then along came Twitter where I began to meet some astonishing new friends who Mark W. Schaefer summarized nicely about in his 1000 post yesterday. He and Jon Buscall and Jenn Whinnem were the earliest of my social media friends, soon followed by Erica Allison, Gini Dietrich, Danny Brown, and a boatload of others from the early Twitter banter days. Yes, Twitter was a nightly festival; it rocked with banter and #RockHot snark. I did 140 with peeps around the world, and I was whole again. Last year on this day I sat for hours in the morning thanking well wishers on Facebook; this year (just 365 later), I’m having to do that on Google+, text messages, Twitter, LinkedIn AND Facebook. It’s heady, celebratory and so amazing how Twitter (and social) changed my life.

Values. Twice in business in the last five months I made the choice to walk away from a client and leave money on the table. Prior, that was unheard of; I would take it on the chin, buck up and carry forth to earn the almighty dollar. Today, not so much. If it feels bad; if I find a lack of respect (the value that has risen to the top of late to my surprise), then I need to move along and overturn the stone elsewhere for the buried treasure. I thank you Peg Fitzpatrick for your gift Monday. The smiles that created on this face were day-long.

Opportunity. I kid you not when I tell you I feel like a kid…in a candy store! From a lowly PR peep in Chicago who got a chance at Manning, Selvage & Lee because I had researched the name of the managing director, James O. Ahtes, and the hiring VP, Dutton Morehouse, had never met a corn detassler, to a marketer, social media upstart (I can’t be an expert), professional blogger, and now digital marketer and self-published author to be…OMGosh…may I tell you the sky is the limit, please? And, will you believe me? It takes gumption, passion, and a zest for learning to keep on. Some made fun of me when I wrote this post on 50 Shades of Wiser as I had used that darn book title everyone loves to hate. Had anyone stopped to really read it, the theme there was about aging gracefully in this social media sector where maturity is a benefit and seasoned doesn’t mean salt.

Celebration. Today, I celebrate you. Each of you in this community and beyond who take time to comment and let me know you’re not lurking every day push me to excel and strive for the next innovation. You can see it happening, I know, and your patience as I churned through the steps to get here today is appreciated. Never one to jump in first, it takes me time to look at all the angles and find a way to carpe diem (the one thing I took away from advertising class at the University of Wisconsin) and DIY (which I’m trying not to do as much!). For all of you here who have contributed to where I’m at today, thank you. My wish is for many more with you, right here.

Reflect AND Celebrate!

The Future of Blogging Is Mobile Technology

10/03/2012 By Jayme Soulati

This is post #351; how cool is that?

The future of blogging is mobile technology AND motivated bloggers, that’s my add. This week, I took Mark Schaefer’s blog post about dim lights ahead for bloggers with little that’s new and added my perspective. Read Mark’s post there; read my post here.

In comments, the community heard from both Mark Schaefer and Danny Brown. Each weighed in to put some more insight to what’s around the bend for bloggers.

What they said is too valuable not to make into a post:

Mark suggested he purposely kept his post about what’s new in blogging (July 2012) a bit thin to prompt conversation and chatter about the direction we’re all going. What he clarified in comments on the blog yesterday was more on the influence of mobile technology on blogs.

Mark proffered, “ As smartphones increasingly become our first step to the Internet, the utility of our blogs is eroding day by day. Our beloved medium is becoming harder to read, harder to engage with and less useful – and writing better blog posts won’t change that.”

What he also alluded to is mobile platforms remove the bells and whistles from a blog’s appearance. When people use smartphones and tablets to read a blog, all the widgets and plug-ins in the sidebar disappear. Who we are becomes next to invisible when mobile technology is used.

Enter Danny Brown.

Danny shared fabulous tips in comments I’ll paraphrase and quote:

Bloggers are lazy and short-changing their audience.
Bloggers have no reason not to be mobile for readers’ convenience and at minimal cost.

“Free platforms like Blogger and WordPress.com already offer great mobile-friendly and mobile-optimized designs, and if you’re on self-hosted WordPress, plugins like WPtouch Pro offer a great solution, too,” said Danny in comments.

“Yet, the best one – and very inexpensive – is a true, responsive design. This adapts your site or blog to whatever browser your visitor comes in on, so it’s not just optimized for mobile for older browsers and different displays.

You can grab a responsive design package from the likes of Studiopress and their Genesis framework and child themes for as little as $80.

If you’re serious about your blog and your readers, go responsive. Don’t look to blogging’s future as being at stake – think about you as a blogger, and your responsibility to user experience,” he concluded.

Responsive Design

According to Wikipedia responsive design is “an approach to web design in which a designer intends to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones).”

If you’re really a geek, you may want to try and read the rest of the page after sentence one; I couldn’t make heads or tails about it, but it certainly becomes the question to ask designers of websites and blogs.

Do you do responsive design?

About That Technology

Mark Schaefer will tell you what a scaredy cat I was back in the day when I insisted on tweeting instead of blogging – for a whole year! Mark would try to convince me, and I’d cringe about the technology.

I still hate it because I’ve not mastered it. The things you hear me whine loudest about are the things I fear – big data, analytics, technology, and my new iMac.

Deploy New Plug-ins

What the leaders are saying is for a blogger to grow to the next level, technology is the answer. Go get WPTouch or WPTouch Pro:

From Brave New Code on the plug-in: WPTouch (lifted exactly)

WPTouch automatically transforms your WordPress website into an application-like theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects when viewed from the most popular mobile web browsing devices like the iPhone, iPod touch, Android mobile devices, Palm Pre/Pixi and BlackBerry OS6 mobile devices.

The admin panel allows you to customize many aspects of its appearance, and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to touch mobile visitors, without modifying a single bit of code (or affecting) your regular desktop theme.

The theme also includes the ability for visitors to switch between WPtouch view and your site’s regular theme.

Now Available: WPtouch Pro! Totally re-written top to bottom, with a slew of new features like more style, color and branding customizations, themes, 10 languages, more advertising options, Web-Application mode, and more!

Awesome iPad theme support is now available in WPtouch Pro, now at version 2.7!

So, to wrap it up — run and get some new mobile-type plug-ins for your blog; we have to or else Mr. Brown is going to keep calling us lazy critters!

Credit: Brave New World WP Touch

In Social Media Chaos, Remember Traditional PR

08/01/2012 By Jayme Soulati

From www.honesttea.com

I never, ever thought I’d write a post about the value of traditional (I don’t put PR in my title much any more; I prefer the business-to-business social media marketing moniker.) I was all up in arms over a he got from a PR firm about a new buzz word its trying to create, called “PRkting.”

That threw me into a tailspin, and here’s why:

Public relations is its own discipline. Yes, now more than ever with marketing.

Ergo WE DO NOT NEED TO CALL OURSELVES A CUTESY B.S. DESCRIPTOR.

Maybe the ergo was supposed to swing the other way; in this instance it swung…directly into the quagmire of bad ideas.

Public relations practitioners have gotten, get and will always earn a bad rap; especially if they’re behind the . If you’ve been following any posts , at , at or at , then you’ll know how bad it’s been for we in PR.

Putting a stupid, trendy buzz word moniker on what public relations should be to disguise all the bad and to tap the good from marketing is not the answer. What is the answer is doing good, traditional PR to earn respect. That way people in marketing and business and the C-suite and corner office can understand the value of public relations.

Good Old Traditional PR

An , cofounder & TeaEO of Honest Tea, July 23, 2012 is a perfect example of traditional public relations at its finest.

Mr. Goldman, to be sure, did not pick up the phone and pitch the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal all by his lonesome. After all, he’s “TeaEO” and that’s his title, no lie.

The TeaEO of wouldn’t have thought of aligning a current business issue in an op-ed based on a proposal by NYC Mayor Bloomberg to ban sugar-sweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 oz. After all, Mr. Goldman is in a corner office running his business.

Mr. Goldman, TeaEO of , is likely not the brilliant writer depicted in the Wall Street Journal op-ed, although one cannot be sure. His smarts are more than likely attributed to solid business sense to “launch Honest Tea 14 years ago with five thermoses and a belief that consumers were thirsty for a lower-calorie natural and organic beverage.”

And, so, I bring you three solid reasons why traditional public relations is squarely behind 75 percent of op-eds you read in national newspapers (that stat is totally unsubstantiated).

Do you think the TeaEO (I bet you’re tired of hearing that title, eh?) of an entrepreneurial company knew innately how to land an op-ed in a national print daily business newspaper or did he perhaps rely upon professionally trained, strategic public relations practitioners who knew to:

Seize Mayor Bloomberg’s timely proposal about anti-sugar drinks in large containers and make a case for Honest Tea which already has made a sizeable capital investment to conform to current New York City regulations?
Challenge the NYC mayor to consider and reverse his expensive business proposition that would wreak havoc on a business that provides tea in 16.9 oz bottles to city restaurants.
Write a coherent and thoughtful op-ed with action orientation that has readers siding with the TeaEO.
Pitch the piece to a department in the Wall Street Journal typically so absolutely unapproachable AND get it accepted for publication.

Eh?

Perhaps you hadn’t thought of what goes on behind an op-ed until now. Trust me when I tell you, that public relations by strategic practitioners make these elements happen on a daily basis; it’s just that you don’t know it. And, trust me when I tell you this…when you see a PR person trying to appear on the frontlines and earn credit for this type of work, run the other way; fast.

Our role is to make our clients and company spokespeople look good on the frontlines; we’re never in the limelight ourselves.

« Previous Page

Soulati-'TUDE!

Buy Influencer Marketing Books

Five Marketing Basics

Related articles

Related articles