soulati.com

Digital Marketing Strategy, PR and Messaging

Soulati-'TUDE!

Thank You Louisville Plus Savvier Social Media SlideShare

By

Jayme-Soulati-presenting.jpgThe hospitality of the Louisville IABC chapter and the Louisville Digital Association knows no bounds.

At its 5th Marketing Summit, where I presented, the day was packed with a breadth of topics and the widest array of speakers I’ve seen at a day conference.

Jason Falls, Mr. Social Media Explorer and Café Press, was emcee and earns credit for pulling in presenters the likes of:

  • Gini Dietrich speaking on Marketing in the Round from Chicago
  • Heather Whaling, Geben Communication, sharing PR on the bleeding edge and she’s rockin’ it from Columbus, Ohio
  • David Knox, CMO of Rock Fish and with the Brandery, Cincinnati, Ohio
  • Jayme Soulati, on Savvier Social Media Across the Marketing Blend, from Dayton, Ohio
  • David Coomer who shared his campaign called Beardvertising (pretty funny)

And others from the region who spoke from public utilities, about retargeting campaigns and more.

Savvier Social Media

Although I whined for four weeks that Jason assigned me the toughest topic – how social media integrates across all the marketing disciplines, the presentation rocked, and it was probably due to the fact that I had a row of hecklers (ahem, Gini Dietrich, Heather Whaling and Deborah) in the front row (not to mention my new laser pointer which reached all the way to the back of the room and spotlighted people who were too engrossed in their devices).

Thanks to Fashionbi, the Milan startup covering global fashion brands, for #RockHot analytics for my deck.

Thanks for Trackur for agreeing to “sponsor” my presentation with the first-ever advertisement in a PowerPoint deck.

Thanks to J. Crew for being the crux of the presentation with a case study on its very savvy social media, although they didn’t know it.

Thanks to the audience for letting me entertain while provoking the main goal – think differently about social media.

Find My Deck On SlideShare

This is my first official upload of a SlideShare deck. I’ve always shied away from sharing my prezzies.

To my surprise and utter delight, there are already 128 views in less than 24 hours. #RockHot!

What’s interesting is that a deck can have the best pictures, but it’s truly all in the delivery.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Serendipity And The Social Web

By

3-princes-of-serendip.jpgSpoiler alert: the secret to making people like you on social media is to stop trying to make them like you on social media. Letting go of that desire can cause some amazing things to happen. I was reminded of this principle recently.

One morning I started my day doing two things I do not do enough.

The first was to look through my Twitter stream. Usually I see links to the same articles I find on Triberr, my RSS feed and other content discovery sources. This time was different.

Immediately I spotted a tweet from Jayme with a link to a new post: “Thoughts On Love In Business.” It’s a topic I have blogged about, and I was thinking about it again for another post.

Clicks And Comments

I clicked the link that led to this blog. That’s when I did the second thing I do not do enough.

I left a comment. Just a quick response to the question posed and a “thank you” for opening the discussion. Those two things, a Twitter discovery and a comment, triggered a series of unexpected events that amazed me.

First, Jayme replied to my comment asking me to leave links to the articles I’ve written. Then a chain reaction:

• She read my posts and liked them. A lot.
• She left comments.
• She shared them on Twitter and Facebook.
• We connected on LinkedIn and Facebook.
• She encouraged her community to visit my blog.
• Some community members left comments and subscribed.
• We had an awesome phone conversation the next day.

All of that happened within 24 hours of my leaving that comment. Jayme asked if I’d be interested in writing a guest post about this experience. And so here we are.

Social Media Serendipity

Some would describe this chain of events as the law of attraction at work. Some would call it good Karma. Others would use the word “grace.” Whatever your orientation, the common idea is serendipity.

Serendipity is most commonly defined as luck or good fortune and the aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. But when I looked it up, I found a new wrinkle to its meaning.

The word originates from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip whose heroes had a gift for making accidental discoveries of things they were not in a quest for.

Which brings me back to the beginning.

What I learned from this experience is that ‘happy accidents’ can happen on social media when you are not trying too hard to make them happen. When I started the day, I wasn’t on a quest to make power connections or drive traffic to my blog. I didn’t even leave a link in my comment until being asked.

You could argue that is not savvy marketing. But in that moment I was not in a self-promote mindset. I was just following a discovery I stumbled into by accident.

And wow. At the end of the day I got a wonderful lesson on the power of a tweet and a comment to open up serendipitous opportunities on social media.

Thank you Jayme and community.

About The Author

John-Gregory-Olson.jpgJohn Gregory Olson is a B2B marketing consultant and freelance copywriter. He writes about marketing strategy and leadership on his blog. Follow him on Twitter @John_G_Olson .

 

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

The Happy Friday Series: Generosity As A Strategy

By

Generosity in Theory

Helping your fellow man is one of the most rewarding things you can do. Unlike traditional monetary exchanges, both parties leave the transaction richer. A Win Win.

It feels as good to give as it does to receive.

Generosity is cultural. We mirror the behaviour of those around us. Generous acts are contagious. Generosity is infectious. Kindness begets more kindness.

Keith Ferrazzi argues not to keep score in his best seller “Never Eat Alone”. It’s so true. To be truly generous it can require you to be less rigorous on how you filter – we need to let more ideas and options into our world so you can be more generous. Not every transaction is designed to bring immediate value. We don’t know who people know, or where a single new connection may lead. Generosity has a lens all of its own. Generosity is a growth strategy, but you need to be committed to generosity for the long haul – don’t expect quick returns.

Ted Rubin has it right with his Return on Relationship #ROR mantra. Investing in relationships pays dividends.

Whilst we should not keep score, we all ultimately have to place some limits on our generosity. We can’t all be generous all day long. We have to somehow choose how and where and why we are generous. We all need to make generosity a strategy. We need to be conscious about how we invest.

Generosity in Action

This week something really special happened that we just had to share.

If you follow our blog, you’ll know we recently created the “content audit” and have since completed audits for 100 top blogs. We have plans to do many more audits, with 30+ requests for audits outstanding (We’ve been offering a free audit for anyone that likes and comments on this slidedeck.

Well, this week I got into a dialog with Jackson Middleton of a kilt wearing Canadian Mortgage Broker from Regina. He had some technical questions about the image customization.

Screen-Shot-2013-08-19-at-5.21.50-PM-300x196

The photo hides the fact that Jackson is a fervent wearer of kilts.

 

 

 

Here’s what’s not shown in the picture above. I think that’s pretty cool!

Jackson-middleton-kilt-generosity

I apologized that his audit was not ready yet. He was being very complimentary about our content audit project and offered to help complete some audits.

It’s funny, but when people offer, you often don’t take them up on their generosity (we often think people don’t really mean what they say – or we don’t want to feel obliged). I didn’t disbelieve Jackson for one minute, I just didn’t quite get the full force of his intent.

2 minutes later, he reiterated his offer and so I accepted. I dropped what I was doing and shared a batch of blogs and the instructions to complete an audit.

I was truly appreciative and he was only too happy to help. Win-Win.

What happened next was unexpected, intriguing and really rather charming.

Jayme Soulati noticed the list he’d made to audit her blog and wrote a post title “Use List.ly For Gifts And Curation” about how it was a gift.

Jayme-Soulati.jpg

I know Soulati via social media and I know Jackson via Listly and prior exchanges., but they didn’t know each other. They got into an exchange. In social there is nothing better than connecting your customers.

@kiltedbroker Good Morning! Did you do this @list.ly List.ly about my content?

— Jayme Soulati (@Soulati) August 15, 2013

@Soulati good morning Jayme. I had a great time looking through your last 25 blog posts helping @NickKellet with your Content Card.

— Jackson Middleton (@KiltedBroker) August 15, 2013

It’s funny how it happened as it wasn’t my intent, but connecting customer and cultivating community amongst Listly users is high on my agenda..

This dialog was not planned, and yet this is what social networking is all about – you have to let serendipity into the building. You have to give chance a chance.

Very shortly after, I noticed Merlin Ward was in a dialog with Jackson too. It turns out Jackson’s audit list of Merlin’s posts was Merlin’s top referral source for the day. I’ve know Merlin for ages, but Merlin and Jackson had not previously connected.

MerlinuWard.jpg

@KiltedBroker Jackson, thanks for curating my blog on @listly. You’re in my top 10 referrers today!

— Merlin U Ward (@MerlinUWard) August 15, 2013

@kiltedbroker I’m flattered and appreciate your support!

— Merlin U Ward (@MerlinUWard) August 15, 2013

There’s a trend happening here. It turns out that auditing people’s content is social. Both these connections came about because of a generous act.

Creating engagement is hard and yet here was Jackson making it look like child’s play. Generosity creates more generosity.

I also found the result of creating the audit to be highly social too. It created a lot of engagement and I deepened many of my existing connections, whilst making many new ones too.

What kind of study could you perform for your niche? Do you have a target list of people you’d like to get to know. Have you thought of ways of getting into a dialog with them?

The content audit does a good job of creating engagement and it’s universally applicable in an age where content is king. Would you like to create an audit of 20 bloggers in your domain, city, niche etc.

We all want to discover ways to enhance our content creation machine. The best feedback I’ve heard about the Content Audit is that it’s highly actionable. It makes it easy to see your content gaps and take action to fill them.

What Does This Mean for You?

You could:

  • Take it local e.g. Canadian Bloggers or San Fran Bloggers
    Take it vertical /niche e.g. Compare the content of 20 top email marketing providers (pick a segment relevant to your business)
    Take it local and Vetical/niche e.g. Denver Travel Blogs

This post, revised from its first publishing, originally appeared on the List.ly blog by Nick Kellet.

Nick-Kellet.jpg

Nick Kellet, someone impressive you should know. Woah.

About the Author

Nick Kellet plays with the future and it plays back. He’s a creator and curator of ideas. Nick believes that passion in the company of friends and community is an unstoppable force. He’s always been an innovator with heartfelt enthusiasm for every new project he touches. As co-founder of List.ly, Nick is actively shaping how people think, feel and experience curation. He believes curation should be as much about listening and engaging as it is about publishing and the tools themselves.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Use EverPost To Influence Klout

By

EverPost.jpgVia a LinkedIn group, a pitch came from someone I didn’t know asking for a review of EverPost.co. I let it sit and slide to the bottom of the priority list until a better time to find time.

About EverPost

To my utter delight, EverPost is the simplest tool I’ve come across for content shares of others’ material.

You register free with Twitter or Facebook.

Choose which channels you want to share on — either LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

Select five categories of topics you’d like to follow.

Voila! A board appears with content from a variety of sites in the categories of topics you want to peruse.

Click share or auto-schedule, and your share is on its way to the channels you selected.

It’s so simple, and there’s a plethora of content at your fingertips to push out to the Interwebz.

Why I Love EverPost

  • Did I say it’s simple?
  • There is zero learning curve; sign up and go.
  • I do want to share good content without strings attached; this enables that.
  • I get to share a wide range of topics from one dashboard. If I get tired of posting content in one category, then I go back to the drop-down menu and select another after deleting one of my chosen five.
  • There are no comments from the dashboard; however, you can go to the blog and read the entire post before sharing (ahem, as you’re supposed to).
  • The tweets show up with the author’s Twitter ID; they can see that a new person is sharing their material.

Klout Is About Influence

Triberr, my fave blogger sharing platform (please ask to join my tribe!), is getting into the influence game. That means influence scoring is going to be more about the Klout number, too.

If you’re at all concerned about lots of shares to keep the Klout score high, then you need to use EverPost.

In about 10 minutes, you can share 20 blog posts. Yes, you can scan the post and vet it prior to sending, too.

I find it always a challenge to concern myself with keeping my Klout score high. I don’t have the ability to sit around on the Interwebz and share content all day. Were I to be able to, my influence score would be higher than it is now.

Perhaps I’m going to use EverPost every day this week to see if I can sustain a higher Klout score just so those numbers prove I’m really an influencer. LOL.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Innovate Or Die

By

Trump-Tower.jpg

Credit: Jayme Soulati via iPhone 4S to Instagram

Every news article you read, there’s something about company innovation. You can scale that to the size of your operation, and that can be in the realm of a self-published book, for example.

The examples I love and which inspire are:

Why Is Innovation Important?

Innovation is about remaining relevant. Companies that produce the same product or service the same way every day are not being innovative.

Companies that remain the same with no change for consumers become surely irrelevant.

Small businesses that never painfully challenge the status quo get stagnant after awhile.

Solopreneurs who never push the envelope to try new things cannot rise to the next level.

What is Innovation?

In this day and age, innovation can be defined in a variety of ways:

  • New products or services
  • New authority for the CEO
  • Increased levels of engagement by a company team
  • New realization that consumers are king.

Consumer Is King; Content is Queen

I want to focus on that a moment; consumers are king.  We’ve been hearing for awhile now that content is king. Nope. The throne is squarely in control of the consumer.

To innovate, companies need to understand consumer is king.

    • What does your consumer need to keep coming back to your business?
    • Where do you need to engage with consumers?
    • Where are they engaging with you?

The takeaway today is not really about defining innovation, because most of us know and understand what that means. Knowing what it takes based on market and consumer research, understanding the inside of your company, and knowing what business goals the company has set are all aspects of successful innovation.

This is such a broad subject, and I’ve only toplined a smidge of this topic. How do you break it down?

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta