Social media Archives - Our Best Words

Published: 6 June 2011

Tags: Marketing Writing, Social media

One of the best ways to promote a company is with opinion articles. Many magazines (online and hard copy) welcome well-written articles. These articles should not be biased though – nobody wants to read a (blatant) sales pitch. As marketing professions will tell you – educating your target audience/potential customers is an effective marketing strategy.
Before starting to write, identify the target audience. Who are the readers of the magazine you want to send the article to? What are their interests? Do you have a direct connection to the editor, or only via a PR company? Does the magazine allow hyperlinks? Do they also want original illustrations? In short – do your homework!
Many marketing and copywriters ghostwrite – they write the opinion pieces for a company’s CEO, CMO or CTO, and when published, it will be under their name.
Points of attention when writing an opinion piece:

It must be informative. The reader should learn something from reading the article.
It must be interesting. The text should flow and keep the reader interested to go on reading.
It must be based on facts, and not assumptions. References to recent events that were covered in the global media are a good hook, as are reports of leading analysts such as Gartner and Forrester.
It must be neutral. As mentioned before, nobody wants to read a sales pitch. A neutral article covering new or future trends, or “how to…” articles are popular. At the end of the year, articles about predictions for the coming year are in demand.
It should have hyperlinks (if allowed by the newspaper), footnotes and references. It makes the article trustworthy and increases the chance for publication.
Most magazines will ask for illustrations. Try to have original images in high resolution. No matter what industry you are in, the chance that your competitors use the same stock photos is high. Diagrams are always popular in tech pieces, as are product photos. Make sure to send different photos to various magazines – don’t forget, they all want to have original content!
Custom write your story tailored to each magazine. Sending the same article to several tech magazines is professional suicide, especially in today’s viral media.
Make sure to put a short bio with contact details at the bottom of the article.
Follow up. Once you see that your article in published, drop a thank-you note to the magazine (or journalist). Blog and tweet about it, and make sure to include the URL of the publication.

Published: 24 May 2011

Tags: MarCom, Marketing Writing, Social media

Organizations, SME/SMB, celebrities, individuals – we all need and use social media to drum up business, to find work, to fight for a cause, or to be part of a community.

But before starting to use LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, it’s important to formulate a strategy.

Formulate your goal
Why do you want to use social media? What do you want to achieve? Do you want to brand your company or do you want to establish yourself as a brand or as an expert? Or do you want to leverage the power of social media to find a job?

Identify your target audience
Once you know what you want to achieve, you can now define your target audience. Are you looking for work? HR managers and companies use LinkedIn to find new employees or freelancers. If you want to launch or support a cause or start a social campaign, your audience is mainly on Facebook. If you want to build your brand, the general public is your target audience.

Determine your USP
To be successful, you need to analyze both your strengths and your weaknesses. Define your Unique Selling Point (USP) – each one of us has unique assets (e.g., experience, skills, offering a great product/service).

Identify the best social media to succeed
For entertainers such as musicians, YouTube is ideal. Job seekers are advised to use LinkedIn and Xing. For cause marketing, Facebook is the best choice. Twitter is excellent for branding. For market research, all social media are effective to get quick and reliable results.

Formulate your strategy
Using social media means building an online presence. To be successful, a strategy must be formulated that outline how you want to present yourself, build your brand or represent your company. Decide on the content of your message (links, tweets, posting) and the frequency (monthly, weekly, daily, ongoing).

Stay active
Social media are real-time. Users must stay active to get their message across. You need to keep on communicating with your target audience.

Check what works – does your target audience find you? Do you get positive feedback?

Do you need to invest in promotion such as advertisements? Do you need to leverage Word of Mouth (WOM)? Do you need to adjust your strategy?

Want to learn more about social marketing? Sign up for our marketing & MarCom course!

Email: training@ourbestwords.com
Tel. 02-656 3369
Mobile: 054-810 8918, 050-529 0775
Website: www.ourbestwords.com
(Image courtesy of www.hetemeel.com)

Published: 12 May 2011

Tags: Blogs, facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing Writing, Social media, Twitter

As we all know that social marketing is the current and future marketing trend. It has several advantages compared to classic marketing:

Higher level of transparency

Customers, prospect, business partners, and employees are googling for information: e.g., legal complications, background, experience, recommendations. Companies therefore need to be transparent in order to build and maintain trust with their suppliers, customers, employees, stakeholders and target audience. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs are perfect to inform and communicate in real time.

Promotion is far less intrusive

Customers resent aggressive ads that are intrusive and interrupt. Smart companies know the behavior pattern of their target audience and make sure to engage them in a smart way with their brand. Social media provide a great promotion channel, since the target audience has control over how and when to be exposed to brand and product promotion.

Focus on target audience, not the business itself

Good marketing is interactive. Marketing campaigns should be aimed at and interacting with the target audience. Any campaign launched by the company must be built on the target audience, not the business itself.

Integrates online video

Video and mobile marketing are gaining ground. More and more companies are creating their own online video content. Especially testimonials and endorsements are powerful tools. They are easy to create and posting them on YouTube ensures instant and free promotion.

It rocks

Social marketing provides a golden marketing opportunity, but it must be done properly. It must therefore have repeatability; a one-time effort is not only a waste of time, but would also build false expectations and could therefore easily backfire. Needless to say, in the online marketing arena, any campaign must be relevant and memorable. The power of any online marketing campaign is its ability to go viral.

Leveraging new concepts
Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and YouTube are here to stay, so leverage them. More and more individuals and companies around the world are adopting them. They provide agile channels to reach potential customers, build brand loyalty, to keep connected with customers, and to find out what competitors are up to.

Cost-effective

The main expense for managing a social media platform is time when done in-house. But it must be correctly – it must remain relevant, consistent and persistent. Many companies therefore prefer to outsource.

Want to learn more about social media? Contact Our Best Words at info@ourbestwords.com

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