On stage with me were the fabulous Krista Neher and Jeff Cohen, who gave rousing talks on what I frankly thought was one of the best session titles I’ve ever seen!

The post Science Behind Great Social Media, Digital PR and Content Marketing appeared first on Delightful Communications.

Just because my new job was to advise and help others understand social media, digital PR and get the most from their personal brands, it didn’t mean I knew everything, and I should see this as an opportunity to keep up-to-date with all the latest tools and trends.

That might seem an obvious discipline to stick too, but in my 13 years in online marketing I have met many people willing to take money from others who were not as current as they might have been.

My mantra has always been to be as transparent as possible, and if I don’t know something, admit it and go and learn whatever it was I needed to know.

Life’s a Long Path of Learning

What has helped me keep learning is taking on clients from which I’ll learn in spades as well as help them improve in the areas they hire me to.

John Gagnon from Bing Ads last week published a post outlining a bunch of PPC and SEO Tools for Excel. He’s been speaking about these Excel tools and how to use Excel to distil oodles of data and present it in an actionable way at conferences for a while now.

Finally getting it all down on his ClickZ column, it’s a fantastic resource for anyone who knows they should be using Excel in new and smarter ways.

The other piece of content marketing I’ll be pouring over this week is on Majestic SEO’s blog: Webinar Recording: 7 Secrets To Getting More Quality Links

This is a free webinar from Ken McGaffin and Garrett French who talk about how to be smart with link building and get wholesome links to your site that the search engines will sit up and pay attention to.

A few months ago I gave some insight about how you might use Majestic SEO for link building and influencer outreach, Ken and Garrett’s webinar goes into lots more detail and offers some really smart tips.

So there you are. It’s not even 9.30am on a Monday morning and I already have my learning cut out for me for the week.

How about you? Seen anything recently that you want to help educate our readers with?

Comment below and share this post with your ideas.

The post Learning: Link Building Advice & Excel Tools for PPC and SEO appeared first on Delightful Communications.

In my book, Pioneers of Digital, the fabulous Avinash Kaushik talks about how he tested his famous blog – Occam’s Razor – on his wife and fellow work colleagues in order to get their feedback before he went public with it.

Well, when I started Delightful Communications, I decided to canvas industry peers about many aspects of my start-up including marketing and found that many people singled out business cards as a no-no. They’d scoff and say, “I don’t need to carry business cards, they’re out of date in this digital age.”

Curiously this happens to be a through-line in many people minds (having done some research on the interwebz), so I set out to prove them wrong and decided to focus on quality, impact and how they might improve my personal brand.

Convinced that a physical marketing/communication tool could still be of value (even in a digital industry), I asked some friends on Facebook and, although most people called out Vistaprint, I’d always been a fan of Moo Cards, so decided to try out some of theirs.

Beginning with their mini-cards, I actually designed several different versions and at a networking event would give people a choice, making a mental note of the design and colour scheme as we chatted.

But then I discovered their Moo Luxe Business Card and was immediately sold!

Front of Moo Luxe Business Cards

I just knew they were right for my brand and while not cheap (up to twice as much as regular ones), they were simply stunning and nowhere near what I was quoted for singularly printed cards on fantastic quality card stock.

Back of Moo Luxe Business Cards

What made me even more sure I was embarking along the right path was my wife Ashley’s reaction to the thickness. As you can see below they have different coloured “seams” running through them, and she was worried people might think there were two of them stuck together. This wasn’t a problem for me as people end up spending more time with it, feeling the thickness, getting tactile with the Delightful brand and then realizing that it’s just a really good quality business card that simply and elegantly tells the holder exactly what services I provide and where they can get hold of me.

Triple Thickness and a Colourful Seam

What I have found is that it’s a great conversation starter and people have said that my Delightful business card means they instantly recollect our conversation and many can’t bear to throw it away (because it just feels expensive and not disposable).

Delivered in a Pretty Business Card Box

Thanks John Lee

This post was inspired by John Lee after attending the Hanapin Marketing Hero Conference. He kindly Tweeted the above a few days after meeting me and chatting at the event.

A digital call out about a physical marketing tool that many people are saying is dead.

Have I proved them wrong?

Here are my tips for your business card and how it can improve your personal brand:

• Invest in good quality printing and card stock. Cheap tools make you look cheap.
• Keep it simple. You don’t need to put every contact detail on it. Tailor them to your audience. You wouldn’t expect to find a funeral director’s Facebook username on his or a LinkedIn username on a cabaret singer’s.
• Hand it over with both hands. The Japanese do this and it really helps focus the reciever to take a good look.
• Think of a story to tell while you’re handing it over. A story that reinforces you and your brand. I talk about the three parts to Delightful – Social Media, Digital PR and Personal Branding – a 30 second elevator pitch while they’re checking both sides of the card.
• Get the receivers card as well and ask them questions about their business. People like to talk but in general are not great self-promoters, so showing an interest when you have their card in your hand and giving them an opportunity to sell themselves will endear yourself to them AND you might actually learn something!
• Follow up after the event. An email or a tailored LinkedIn request will keep you connected, should you want to develop the relationship further at some time in the future.

So what are your thoughts? Do you think business cards are dead? Where do you get your cards? Got any tips on how best to use them in networking situations?

Do comment below and please share this post!

The post Why Business Cards Are Not Dead and How to Create Great Ones appeared first on Delightful Communications.

A couple of weeks ago, it just happened that our booth at SMX West was smack bang next to Market Motive’s where the fabulous Jennifer Cario (nee Laycock) was signing copies of her new book: Pinterest Marketing: An Hour a Day

Not one to pass up an opportunity, and always on the look out for tips to pass onto my clients and followers, I asked Jennifer if she could spare a few minutes chatting to me about the book, what tips she had for businesses when it comes to their Pinterest marketing, where Pinterest marketing should fit into the overall social media mix, and how marketers should be thinking about copyright and trademark issues so they don’t get into a sticky mess with their pinning.

I know from my experience with clients - I also pin Delightful social media insight and digital PR research when I can – that Pinterest can be a wonderful resource and source of traffic for websites, but that, even though we keep hearing it’s a must “have” social channel, many businesses are still a little in the dark as to how to leverage it well enough to justify the time spent.

Jennifer gave some great, no-nonsense answers to all those questions, so if you are in any doubt as to whether your Pinterest marketing strategy is heading in the right direction, take a peek at the video above and follow Jennifer on Twitter for all her Pinterest goodness.

Thanks,

Mel

P.S. If you think Jennifer’s Pinterest tips and advice are worth sharing, why don’t you share this post and let all your followers in on the information!

The post Pinterest Marketing An Hour a Day – Interview with Author Jennifer Cario appeared first on Delightful Communications.

Now we’re well into 2013, “content marketing” seems to be the Holy Grail adorning the subject line of most inbound marketing blog posts and digital industry conference agendas.

It’s a little funny to me, because for several years many companies have been creating meaningful, useful, relevant and delightful content in order to amplify their brand presence and attract new customers (keeping current one’s entertained), and yet it only seems recently the trend has become mainstream and part of our digital vernacular.

To this I say, HURRAH!

/shrug (Flickr Credit: striatic)

During my time at Microsoft, I worked with different marketing and PR teams to create content – be they blog posts, videos, photos or social experiences – that helped the brand be talked about for longer. I’ve written before about how important Digital PR is to an organization, and about how CEOs need to get with social media in order to create the kinds of conversations people want to hear. So couple that with a content marketing discipline throughout the company, and you start to have a really powerful platform for message dissemination that’s both enduring AND endearing.

But!

And it’s the proverbial BIG BUT!

That content needs to have meaning and an action associated with it.

Too much waffle, chest beating and pointless wastes of copy spill from business servers every day.

It has what I’ve always called, the “so what?” factor!

• Why did I just read that 700 word blog post if there’s no link at the end to buy the new product you’ve been telling me about?
• Why did I just watch that 4 minute video that cost you tens of thousands of dollars to make, if at the end there is no call to action, no website URL, no hashtag or handle and no link in the description for me to follow and find out more?
• Why did I just spend 40 minutes watching your VP of Whatever on stage doing a keynote telling me how wonderful your company is, show a bunch of case studies and talk about a bunch of products if there is no digital “go do” at the end of their speech?

Don’t Be Empty

Digital marketing, social media and the internet have given us the gift of action.

It’s afforded us as marketers to be able to keep consumers’ attention by making the content useful and creating calls and signals for them to discover more and keep spending time with your brand. Time they could be spending with your competitors if you didn’t reign them back in with must see/read/watch content.

The key to that content though, is that anyone who sees, reads or watches it, doesn’t get to the end and simply SHRUG!

When you create something, look back over it, pass it around your peers and see if anyone simply thinks “so what?”

If you or they do, you might be doing your brand and yourself a disservice.

Optimize your content marketing for action and whatever you have to say will linger longer!

The post Content Marketing Tips: Beware the ‘So What? Factor’ appeared first on Delightful Communications.

During my 12 years in digital marketing and my 9 year career in the entertainment business, one thing I’ve observed is just how badly some CEOs and senior business leaders conduct themselves online and onstage.

Okay, so “badly” is probably too strong a word, so let’s say they leave a lot of opportunity begging as they and their PR teams miss many chances to really cement a positive image in the minds of their own staff, their customers AND their potential customers.

Only last week, eMarketer talked about some Weber Shandwick research into the subject.

Is your CEO ready for the digital stage? (Photo: CODYody)

This is what they concluded:

“Having some kind of CEO presence on social channels is becoming an almost necessary part of doing business—whether for brand image or company transparency. Eight out of 10 employees deemed it important to communicating with customers and investors. On the flip side, almost half of respondents said CEOs who did not engage on social channels risked becoming out of touch with their customers—an indication that, over time, not engaging on social media will be considered a liability more than a choice.”

We’re living in an age where digital feedback via social channels is rife and marketing and PR teams get that.

What their not doing well is promoting one of their best and most public assets in an intelligent way.

Next week I’m talking about Digital Evangelism at SearchFest in Portland, and I’ll be touching on the need for companies to have a face, a human face that customers can identify with and look for positive signals from and engage with.

Digital and social media content across a myriad of devices has educated a much more savvy public as to what is PR spin and inauthenticity on the part of a CEO.

They can smell it a mile off, and they will react badly if they get a whiff.

What companies need to do is formulate a strategy around their leaders’ personal brand and open them out a little to the world.

Some CEOs are not that gregarious, really busy running the business, and just not that into broadcasting their every thought and that’s OK.

But they all have a story to tell, and they all have a duty to respond in some way in an authentic and honest manner to feedback whether good or bad.

In 2013, that’s the sort of behaviour that gets your brand liked. That’s the sort of behaviour that get’s your brand talked about in a positive and endearing fashion.

In a world where one Tweet can go more viral than anything ever before and say so much in a photo about that leader and his feelings & values, doesn’t it make sense that your business at least try and create a positive digital platform for your CEOs personal brand and that of the company?

If you or your company leader is in need of a personal branding strategy please Contact Me…….before your competitor does!

If you agree with this post or have a comment please share it and say your piece below!

The post CEOs Need Help With Social Media and Personal Branding appeared first on Delightful Communications.

Welcome to one of my PR Pet Peeves!

A quick search for the phrase “excited to announce” on Google throws up 138,000,000 references. They even helpfully try and complete your query because so many people are using that adjective in their press release copy.

This is lazy writing.

With the deluge of news emanating via the web and social channels these days, it’s crucial that you stand out from the crowd.

Your press releases, and how you disseminate your news is one of the ways to do that.

Super-excited!

Seriously? If everyone was THAT excited all the time, it’s a wonder any work gets done and we’re not all on tranquilizers.

Here are 5 (but by no means all) alternatives to the word “excited” when announcing something:

• Thrilled – why not? It smacks a little more hyper than excited, but if this announcement really is as awesome as you think it is, then express it that way.
• Delighted – I’m biased here, but this word makes me happy!
• Elated – sounds like you’re on Cloud 9 and if your news can match it, we’ll have no worries in thinking “good for you”!
• Jubilant – we can just see you doing cartwheels across the office after pressing publish!
• Tickled – bit cheeky. Makes us smile and endears ourselves to your geniality.

Obviously these aren’t the only alternatives and you don’t have to use the word “announce” either.

Just be aware that it’s more important than ever to make your news brilliant (literally), so being cognizant of how others announce stuff and the opportunities you have of being original and really grabbing your audiences attention, is critical to your success.

Got any thoughts on this post? Please comment below!

Good luck!

Mel

P.S. If you liked this blog post, read more on personal branding, social media and digital PR and please don’t hesitate to share it!

P.P.S. “Pleased” is actually the most over-used word with 380M Google references, but I wouldn’t insult your intelligence by suggesting you’d ever use that!

The post EXCITED! – 5 Alternatives to the Most Overused Word in Press Releases appeared first on Delightful Communications.

Ever since I saw Lisa Buyer taking about the original research at SES New York a couple of years ago, I’ve used it in pretty much every pitch/strategy deck I’ve written or spoken to.

Essentially, it’s a simple way to articulate a few ways you might approach a journalist with a story, get the pitch picked up and watch it fly off the press outlet’s servers.

• By adding multimedia assets to your pitch, you’re already helping the writer create an engaging piece. Whether it’s an image or infographic, or a video or white paper, you’re giving the journalist assets that add colour to whatever they are writing about. Because of the digital and social media revolution, journalists are short of time and under pressure to crank out more and more stories, so gifting them assets helps them get a head start on telling the story they want to tell based also on your commentary with the multi-media.
• Journalists are hungry for engaging visual imagery because that’s what gets the noticed. When Bing first launched, they had done some research into visual engagement and found that the human brain can assimilate the information from an image FORTY times quicker than the written word (why do you think infographics are so successful in generating buzz?).
• Any news outlet’s audience is time poor as well. We’ve stopped wanting to read 3,000 word articles on the web. We just want to get in and out, so if there’s a 90 second video we’ll watch it (as long as it’s not blatantly sales-y) and, more importantly (?), we will want to share it. It’s the sharing that generates the page views as a news item goes “viral”, and not just via social media either, email is still a huge driver of word-of-mouth peer-to-peer content dissemination.
• Talking of social media, it might have escaped your notice (I hope it hasn’t though), that images and video do rather well on Facebook if they strike a chord. So when images get embedded into a press article and people share them on Facebook, the image is often the fist thing that engages the eye and the desire to want to click and find out more.
• Don’t just hand over these assets willy-nilly (always wanted to squeeze that into a blog post) though. Make sure you label the file names for SEO. Search for “social media white paper” on Google (number 3) and Bing (number 1) and you’ll find the Social Media White Paper I wrote 4 years ago ranking very nicely because – guess what? – I labeled it “social-media-white-paper”. Search for Pioneers of Digital in Google’s image search and you see all our photos of the book and the pioneers because we’ve labeled them thus. Search for any of the individual Pioneers and you’ll find our labeled photo in the results. The other reason to label these assets properly is because if they do get emailed to someone, you want them to open that PDF don’t you? If it’s not clearly labeled and looks like some kind of dodgy, virus-ridden file, they are not going to crack it open and experience all your hard work.

Seeing the Light from Robert S. Donovan on Flickr

What gives PRNewswire’s research more legs is this doesn’t just go for regular journalists either. Once you’ve read my blogger outreach & digital PR tips on the Majestic SEO Blog, use this approach with them and your own channels and you will see an uplift in acceptance and exposure, more so than if you simply sent out a hyperbole-riddled email or press release with no images or colour.

Good luck!

Mel

P.S. If you liked this blog post, read more on personal branding, social media and digital PR and please don’t hesitate to share it!

The post How to Turn a Journalist ON with Digital PR appeared first on Delightful Communications.

Hilarious because of the quotes Brian managed to solicit from various sources, and because he gave millennials a chance to answer back where many of them seemed to agree with what had been written about them the day before.

Whatever generation you were born in, the impression you give people in the workplace has never been more important. A business doesn’t owe you a living whatever age you are, and rather like companies trying to survive head and shoulders above others in an increasingly crowded digital world, the same goes for your personal brand in the office.

My Personal Branding Services largely help people with their online persona and how to behave positively and effectively through social media, but having read these articles, I couldn’t help but want to jot down my thoughts on how to leaving an enduring impression in the physical workplace.

Millennium Bridge in London (Flickr)

Ask Questions

You don’t know everything, no matter how old you are or how experienced you are, so don’t be afraid to ask questions or to clarify points that are raised in meetings or over email. Knowledge is power and if you don’t have it, ask the person who does because you’ll learn something and they will feel good about themselves for having been of use to you. As I wrote last week, being honest in ignorance comes across far better than a BS approach.

Asking smart questions of senior people in the business helps raise your profile as well. If you spot the CEO in an elevator or your bosses boss in the queue for coffee, introduce yourself and have something smart to ask about a recent presentation you saw them give or email they sent out. Be genuinely interested in their answer but don’t make it look forced or awkward. Confidence is attractive, as is an incisive comment, so actively listening and participating in that senior person’s thought pattern will mean you’ll be remembered because you made a positive impression.

I’m not suggesting in any way you “suck up”. You’ll be spotted a mile off.

Just be cool and confident but willing to be open and learn.

Take a Professional Course

You don’t know everything (see a pattern here?), so take a course in something niche that could help your career and the business.

Ask the business to pay for it as an investment in you and them.

Back in 2001 I asked my manager at Looksmart if I could do a “Diploma in New Media Management” at Birkbeck College in London. They kindly agreed to pay for it, but not before the request had passed the CEO’s desk who wondered who this guy was that was willing to give up the next 16 Saturdays to learn more skills to help his career and his company.

Now a cynic might say I was just doing it for myself, but actually what I learned I was able to apply to my role and I stayed there until 2003 (when we were all made redundant!).

The plus points were I felt invested in, the company felt good about itself for doing me a good deed, and it benefited from my new skills. Having new or niche skills makes you a valuable commodity in a business. They make you a go-to person and you’ll be referenced more.

Now this enhanced personal brand might mean you getgiven more work to do, or are called on more for your counsel. But that’s the point right? You’re not wanting to be that wall flower anymore. You just have to manage it wisely and turn it to your advantage.

(I was actually asked back to lecture on that same course in 2008 and 2009, so it paid even more dividends in the end!)

Get a Hobby

In my book Pioneers of Digital, Jess Greenwood from R/GA (and formerly Contagious Magazine) says stay curious and widen your interests, as that helps inform your work and layers new ideas on top of it:

“It is a gift to be living in a time where your own personal interests are every bit as valuable to professional success as the way that you operate in the day-to-day of your working environment. It’s an amazing time to be joining the working world. If you are coming into media or advertising and creative professions like that – there’s enormous emphasis on being a well-rounded, interested creative person.”

Of course, having outside interests to help your career and chat about at the coffee machine isn’t just limited to media or advertising.

“Getting a life” will be a focus for many of us at the start of any year, especially in this world of increasing work, so being interested, and interesting, is going to do nothing but help enhance your personal brand and boost your career in a positive way.

Good luck!

Mel

P.S. If you liked this blog post, read more on personal branding, social media and digital PR and please don’t hesitate to share it!

The post 3 Ways to Enhance Your Personal Brand at Work (CCs All Millennials!) appeared first on Delightful Communications.

Some maybe health and fitness related, some maybe career-driven and some will be a combination of both.

Although many of us focus on the physical health of our bodies at this time of year, it pays to have a think about the mental or attitudinal aspects of where we want to be in the next 365 days and how we are going to get there from a cerebral point of view. It’s all very well losing 10 lbs. or cutting down on caffeine, but physical health needs to go hand in hand with some mental limbering up as well.

When it comes to that new job, promotion or next round of VC funding you’ve promised yourself, personal branding and how you present yourself online (or off it) has never been more important to think about, especially in this age of ubiquitous social media.

Photo by artwork_rebel on flickr

What I’ve been suggesting to people they think about is to try and exude what I call “True Confidence” and Sincerity.

Here’s what I mean:

“True Confidence”

There are confident people and there are insecure people out there. Confident people who are very sure of themselves and insecure people who constantly question their value. The trouble is, many of the insecure people actually come across as confident because they over-compensate for their insecurity and feel that they have to bluster their way in and out of conversations as they risk being “found out” or labeled as incompetent if they don’t. Often, the confident people are also a little over-bearing too. They feel the need to get their point across in a robust way which alienates the insecure people who come out fighting and the circle starts again.

You might be wondering how I know all this right? Well I didn’t read it in a book. I’ve observed this kind of behaviour happening both in the US and UK for years.

Here’s a confession: I used to be a tad insecure.

Getting on stage and performing for people wasn’t a problem, nor was starring in pop videos (I used to be an actor). Getting up and speaking in front of hundreds of people at conferences wasn’t a problem either. All that “performing” was escapism and bravado for something I was lacking that was wracking my sub-conscious with a little guilt and low self-esteem.

Now I won’t go into detail, but something happened that snapped me out of that vicious cycle and I started to learn “True Confidence”, the main ingredient of which is the understanding that it is okay to fail, it is okay that you don’t know EVERYTHING, and it’s okay to admit you could do (and BE) better.

My point is that having “True Confidence” means you exhibit and exude (love that word!) an ability to perform what ever it is you want to do – job, sport, parenting etc – to the best of your knowledge and no further, AND that you are continuously trying to improve because you recognize you DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING!

Why is this important for your Personal Brand?

It’s my opinion you will win more friends and influence people if you attempt to excel in your field and demonstrate the need and willingness to learn more and be better. Letting people know you don’t have all the answers is better than bluffing them with overconfidence and BS because in the long run you will be found out.

During my 7 year career at Microsoft, being self-critical was drummed into me (and everyone around me) as a key ingredient to personal growth, and when we interviewed people from outside the organization, it was crucial to try and spot the overconfident people who felt the need to show no fear or gaps in their understanding or skillset. It wasn’t a case of eliminating them outright, but suggesting they might have something to learn. It’s called a “confidence/competence gap”.

It’s not just in interviews that you need “True Confidence”. Online (in blog posts like this) via social channels, and especially in meetings and at conferences, it pays to exercise it.

One of the best examples I can remember was during a Q&A at SES New York a few years ago. A senior chap from Google gave a great presentation on stage to about 1000 people and during the questions he was asked something he didn’t fully know the answer to. Instead of blathering a wishy-washy response, he simply said he didn’t know but would find out and let them know. The response on Twitter from people in the room was very positive. Here was a guy they had all come to listen to because their business depended on it and he was showing himself to be knowledgeable but also fallible………which brings me onto my second point about being sincere.

Be Sincere

As the definition suggests, saying or writing what you “genuinely feel or believe” is essential to your personal brand being seen as authentic and transparent.

Transparency is being seen as an “en vogue” way for CEOs to draw attention to their companies and culture, so living and breathing your personal brand and having the courage of your convictions shines through in any statement you make.

Social media has given people and brands the opportunity to be stripped bare and be seen with warts and all. So why not take advantage of this trend and use it as a window into your personal or corporate soul?

I am instantly turned off by blog posts or opening lines from people who say they “are super-excited to announce…..” It just seems so INauthentic and, to be honest, lazy that, even if they ARE that excited, they couldn’t think of a more honest way to articulate it.

Being sincere through your personal brand doesn’t mean exposing everything either. The adage “less is more” rings true here as I’m not suggesting you suddenly share everything about yourself, just the bits that matter and count towards what ever your personal branding goals are.

A few years ago I wrote a post on public speaking tips which has now been read many thousands of times. In the section on your opening line, I said “don’t make excuses”! This pivots well with this idea of being sincere. Sometimes you don’t have to broadcast to your audience know everything through speech or the written word. Your demeanor will carry you a long way, but having true confidence and being sincere will take you over that finishing line.

Sincerely

Mel

P.S. If you liked this blog post, read more on personal branding, social media and digital PR and please don’t hesitate to share it!

The post How To Present Yourself with True Confidence and Sincerity appeared first on Delightful Communications.