Blog - Page 17 of 22 - Michael Dillon

January 24, 2017

How to Boost Your Digital Marketing With PR

Recently, I listened to the CEO of a multibillion-dollar corporation tell me about his company’s profit and loss; and I realized that he considered marketing, sales and PR — all of it — as a single line item. In this man’s mind, anything driving new business belonged in just one single category. I can understand how that might seem logical; however, when you look at these separate operations as a joint function, you can’t really see how one affects the other. In fact, they are complementary; so lumping them together makes it hard to understand how to maximize those investments. What’s more, if you don’t think about the symbiotic nature of your various outsourced functions, you could be wasting money on ineffective initiatives. How critical is it to capitalize on your PR team’s earned media in your digital marketing? If the 2016 presidential election was any indicator, it’s your […]

5 Under-the-Radar Social Media Studies to Make You A Smarter Marketer

Written by Alfred Lua We are very grateful for all the research that has been done on social media. Social media studies have given us great ideas to improve our social media marketing , helped us understand the psychology behind social media behaviors , and made us better marketers . To help you better understand the ever-changing social media landscape, we jumped into the latest social media research papers, hoping to discover some under-the-radar insights to help supercharge your social media marketing strategy as we head into 2017. In this post, I’d love to share what we discovered and bring you some insightful and surprising social media studies of 2016, sharing the key findings and actionable takeaways you can try today. If any of these studies inspired you with more ideas to experiment with, I’d love to hear from you! 5 Under-the-Radar Social Media Studies to Make You A […]

How to Prove the Value of Social Media to Your CMO

Have you ever sat through a presentation that wasn’t meant for you? You stare blankly at a screen of numbers and nonsensical acronyms , then you disengage after five minutes and daydream about your after-work bike ride. When you’re trying to prove the value of social media to your CMO—or even CEO—you can’t afford to lose their attention. Their time is precious. Luckily, there are simple and effective ways to present your findings. The executives in your company don’t care about the day-to-day details of your brand’s social media strategy. They want to how your efforts are driving business goals. It’s your job to eliminate unnecessary data and present the findings that matter to the C-suite. What your CMO wants to know (and what metrics back it up) 1. How social contributes to revenue How has social contributed to the company’s bottom line? This is the most important question […]

Think Mobile-First for Your Mobile Content

“Think Mobile First” was a popular catchphrase a few years ago when the responsive web-site became popular and important; micro-displays of your website wouldn’t cut it anymore – users needed to have a whole new experience on their mobile device. Now that responsive layout is pretty well established, we as digital marketers need to begin thinking of a new mobile-first: content. Not just how your mobile content is laid out on the site, but rather is the content you are delivering appropriate for consumption on a mobile version of your site? Even though 77 percent of mobile searches were initiated at home or at work – where desktops are readily available , we are still stuck on mobile content in terms of layout; can you scroll, is it easy to click the CTA’s, is the alignment the same in horizontal as well as vertical. However, not much thought is […]

The 7 Traits of Successful Content Marketers

One of the most influential authors of my personal and career journey is Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich was first published in 1937. Now, in its 80th anniversary year, Mr. Hill’s lessons are still extremely relevant and valuable. I had the opportunity to dust off my copy of Think and Grow Rich (from 1960, with dog-eared and coffee-stained pages) a few weeks back during the holiday break. In its relation to content marketing, I noticed some clear takeaways that most corporate marketers simply do not embrace. In the book, 15 powerful chapters are helpful to all individuals, but seven chapters were spot-on relevant to content marketing . Here are quotes from the seven chapters with my notes for each one. Caution from Joe: The book is extremely chauvinistic. If you read it, just prepare yourself for that. 1. Desire “Whatever the mind can conceive and […]

The Art of Seductive Content Marketing

Phil Connors is having a bad day … over, and over, and over. The arrogant Pittsburgh weatherman has once again been sent to cover the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He soon discovers that visiting once a year wasn’t all that bad, given that he’s now living this particular Groundhog Day again, and again, and again. It all begins at 6:00 a.m., the same way each day. The clock radio clicks on with Sonny & Cher’s I Got You Babe , followed by the declaration, “It’s Groundhog Day … and it’s cold out there!” After the initial shock wears off, Phil (played by national treasure Bill Murray) realizes he’s in a time loop. No matter what he does each day, there are no lingering consequences for his actions, because he wakes up and starts over again fresh the next morning. This initially leads to hedonistic behavior, such […]

5 Writing Principles That Will Make Your Content Go Viral

Cast the first stone in me, those of you unwilling to create viral content that gets well shared! And cast the second stone in me, those of you unwilling to create and publish content that gets well shared and… linked! Eric Enge at Stone Temple claims we still need links to enhance traffic. And in the world of content shock , we have to outdo ourselves for creating something truly magical that would bring those links and shares. In 2015, BuzzSumo analyzed one million posts and shocked us with the results: 50% of those posts got less than 8 shares, and 70% of them didn’t get links at all! Sounds not inspiring enough, huh ? This year, they teamed up with Majestic and conducted new research to identify content types with a high potential to go viral. That’s all very fine, but… With all those articles on the one-works-for-all […]

8 Content Marketing Tricks That Helped Dollar Shave Club Go Viral

Ask any North-American male aged 17-30 whether he’s heard of Dollar Shave Club (DSC). He’ll probably say, “Yeah.” And it’s not just dudes who know about DSC. A lot of women know about it too because they’ve bought subscriptions for the men in their lives. Dollar Shave Club is a classic example of startup that blew up—in a good way. What was one of the first signs of their success? A video. A viral video. If you haven’t seen it, you ought to check it out: The company’s launch video, casually titled “Our Blades Are F**king Great,” quickly became a sensation on the web. With punchlines and gags to suit a variety of tastes, the video racked up nearly 5 million views within the first 90 days. The company’s founder, Michael Dubin, had a few aces up his sleeve to help create a professionally cut video. The CEO studied […]

Content Strategy for the Hispanic Market

According to the Content Marketing Institute, in 2012 U.S. Hispanics had an estimated $1.2 trillion in purchasing power; that number is expected to grow to $1.5 trillion in 2015. U.S. Hispanics are spending more time online at twice the market growth rates, adding over a million users per year. In addition, they watch more online video: 62 percent more digital video than non-Hispanics.

U.S. Hispanics a tailored-made target market for digital content strategy: as content strategists, we need to start creating new content specifically tailored to the needs of Hispanic audiences — content that speaks directly to their preferences, interests and culture.

Hispanic Content Doesn’t Mean Spanish – Language

Developing a content strategy for the Hispanic market doesn’t mean that you have to create a Spanish-language site. Confusing Spanish marketing with language is a common mistake and could mean that you are missing out on the majority of your target market: 42.9 percent of U.S. Hispanics prefer to consume online content in English. This statistic is certainly to grow as more bilingual users accept more English Hispanic-centric content.

So what is the best approach for this emerging market? Appealing to the Hispanic Market doesn’t just mean speaking the language; it means understanding Hispanic users and culture. Over at Contently they provide several examples of strategy for reaching the Hispanic market, including:

Knowing and Understanding “Spanglish”
Understanding and marketing to the Hispanic extended family
Using the power of video, particularly on YouTube.

Read the complete article: 5 Content Marketing Tips That’ll Help You Appeal to a Hispanic Audience

January 18, 2017January 18, 2017

An Open Letter to Job Application Sites: Please Suck Less

Dear Job Site Administrators and Form Programmers,

As much as I can appreciate how hard it must be to vet through all resumes that come across the Internet for positions posted by companies on a daily basis, I believe the sites that collect resumes could be doing a much better job on their process. That is why I am putting out this request to all job sites and job application form administrators on the Internet (should they be reading this): Please suck less.

You know who you are: Your forms are hard to use. They are redundant. They are buggy. They are slow. They are long and ask for unnecessary information. They discourage people from filling them out. In short, they don’t work and they need to be fixed. To aid you in this endeavor, I am providing a few items that when addressed, I believe, will help your sites and forms suck less.

Either have me fill out my job history or upload a resume, but not both. Nothing is more soul-crushing than having to repeat information you have just provided. As a job candidate I have gone through the trouble of making a killer resume which your system has requested I upload, only to have to repeat the entire thing in a series of forms. The minute I am asked for 10 years of job history, I’m gone.
Eliminate “Country of Residence”. If I have put in my address as being in a state in the U.S., is necessary to specify that my country of residence is the United States? Is there a Texas in Germany or Uganda? If the country of residence is a must, can you please put “United States” at the top of the drop-down list?
Single Login, please. Everybody wants their own username and passwords. I literally have an Excel file with dozens. What would so difficult about associating the logins with Facebook, or Google or LinkedIn and relieve us all of having to remember what login and password is to be used with your site?
Make the form easy to fill out and scan vertically. Long horizontal forms that do not display information in the standard laptop view hard to fill out. I dislike being scolded for information in a field I could not see.
Put special data format next to the field. If you want the date in the “Date” field to be mm/dd/yyyy then put it there instead of having us guess or be scolded with an error message later.
Put related fields together. Asking for your primary email address and then having another field for receiving updates on jobs should be the same field, or at the very least, in the same area.
Eliminate the disclaimer page. Disclaimer pages (especially the loooong ones full of legalese) come off as untrustworthy and deceptive. Just assure me that my information is secure and private and a short paragraph on what you plan to do with my information and we should be good to go.

See, that wasn’t so bad. These are simple things to fix and would be a long way to sucking less. And who knows, you might even have people completing these things for a change.

Yours,

Michael.