Mel Carson Archive

Earlier this month, we helped the Bing Ads team create a video of the awesome #JanesOfDigital event that took place at SMX West in San Jose.

The evening mini-seminar slash networking opportunity is the second in an on-going series of get-togethers designed to celebrate women in search and digital marketing.

We partnered with our fabulous editor, Andrew Goddard, at Cherry UK to produce a promo which really captures the atmosphere and buzz surrounding this most excellent occasion.

A particular call out to Sarah Wulf who did an exceptional job as anchor and for asking some great questions, which as you can see, garnered some great answers from the evening’s esteemed panel!

So here is the video. Hope you enjoy…

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Regards,

Mel

Keith Reinhard, the chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide, reminded us on Adweek a couple of weeks ago that marketing and advertising have always been about connecting brands with people, and we need to remember that human nature stays pretty constant.

Although the technology landscape is constantly changing, it’s useful to understand and utilize the constants in our lives (and marketing plans) as well.

Twitter Analytics is one tool that can provide valuable data for marketers to understand people, connect with them, and tell stories they love.

Although we’ve been using Twitter Analytics since it was open to the public, the webinar hosted by Twitter last month gave me some deeper insights, especially on how to use the tool for content marketing.

Know Your Audience

Understanding who you are talking to is an essential step before you start talking. Twitter Analytics can help you with this by providing visualized and easy-understanding data about your followers.

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I was contacted a couple of weeks back and asked to help Fast Company reporter Chris Gayomali revamp his personal brand and give him some tips on how he could position himself as more of a business journalist.

Click on the link below to see what happened:

What It’s Like to Get a Personal Brand Makeover by Personal Brand Consultants

Cheers,

Mel

This Thursday – at 1pm PST – I’ll be talking all about Personal Branding during a Twitter chat – #MarketingChat – organized by those fine people at Experian US.

I’ll be answering a bunch of questions on Personal Branding from the Experian Community Manager – @MikeDelgado – and anyone can join in with their questions and thoughts as well.

These occasions have drawn some engaging and inspiring conversations – like this one on Facebook marketing featuring Brian Carter, Mari Smith, Raymond Ray and Andrea Vahl – so I’m thrilled to be asked to impart some of my experience of helping people with their personal brand!

Again, the Twitter chat starts at 1pm PST this Thursday 12th of February.

Follow me – @MelCarson, @Experian_US and #MarketingChat for all the action!

Hope to “see” you there on Thursday!

Cheers,

Mel

A while back I wrote about my loathing of the word “excited” in press releases and the post still gets discovered by people searching for alternatives via the search engines.

Imagine how excited thrilled I was to learn that our friends at LinkedIn had published the latest overused buzzwords of 2014 in a post by their esteemed career expert Catherine Fisher.

Here are the lists:

2014 Global List – Top 10 Most Overused LinkedIn Buzzwords

1. Motivated
2. Passionate
3. Creative
4. Driven
5. Extensive experience
6. Responsible
7. Strategic
8. Track record
9. Organizational
10. Expert

2014 US List – Top 10 Most Overused LinkedIn Buzzwords

1. Motivated
2. Creative
3. Passionate
4. Driven
5. Extensive experience
6. Organizational
7. Strategic
8. Track record
9. Responsible
10. Problem-solving

Funny how “expert” doesn’t make the US Top 10 right?

The one I see most often is where people say they’re an “experienced marketer” or an “experienced manager”. We’re all experienced in some way or another, it’s how much experience and what the results you garnered were that counts so make sure you tell me that too.

My advice is for you to go back through your LinkedIn profile and see if any of these words are omnipresent. If they are, change them up a little in an attempt to stand out from the crowd and prevent eye-rolls and “oh yeahs?” from people peeking at your summary and experience.

There’s a reason LinkedIn share these lists. It’s because they want you to be successful via their platform and success comes from being disciplined, taking your personal brand seriously and spending some quality time crafting a profile that does you justice and doesn’t smack of everyone else’s.

Don’t hesitate to contact us about our personal branding services and good luck!

Cheers,

Mel Carson – Founder of Delightful Communications

As we wrap up an awesome 2014, I wanted to share this awesome presentation design deck with you.

A few weeks ago I was asked by those nice people at SEMrush to provide some thoughts on how business people should approach putting together presentations for conferences and events.

Well they’ve put together a mammoth deck split into smart sections that, if brushing up your presenting skills is a new year resolution, you really should take a few minutes to flick through.

Other than that, we’re taking a couple of weeks off to enjoy Christmas and the holidays so enjoy yours and here’s to a fabulous 2015!

Cheers,

Mel

P.S. One of OUR new year’s resolutions is to provide more content on the Delightful Blog for your delectation. I’ve been a bit too focused on getting my weekly column on Entrepreneur up and running but will get back into the swing of things on here next month!

2014 has pretty much been “the year of content marketing” for many. According to a study from Marketing Profs, organizations have spent 28% of their marketing budget on average doing content marketing this year.

During his session “Focus B2B: Leveraging Kick Ass Content to Drive Profits” at ClickZ Live Chicago, Rob Begg, VP of Enterprise Strategy at Hootsuite, reminded marketers that when it comes to content marketing, the competition is not only against other marketers in your niche, but everything that draws your audience’s attention.

How can you come up with a plan that can cut through all the noises and enable your content to stand out?

Adhere to the following three fundamental pillars Rob suggested to help you out:

Audience: Know who they are and engage with them

Thinking about who you are talking with is crucial before you start talking. Taking one step further on this, Rob recommended brands to think more specifically when segmenting their target audience. Firstly, make sure what actions you want the audience to take. The communication strategies should be different when you are talking to a customer or an industry influencer. Before moving on to the next step, make a decision about if you want to generate leads, encourage social shares, build thought leadership, or something else.

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Over the last few months I’ve been asked to do a lot of interviews and write a bunch of articles about Personal Branding which makes us very happy because we’re obviously onto something here at Delightful.

From a Q&A on Brafton’s site to a two part radio interview on Webmaster Radio with Brad Geddes: Learn About Personal Branding with Mel Carson and Learn How to Increase Your Personal Brand with Mel Carson coupled with being invited to write weekly for Entrepreneur.com on personal branding and pretty much anything to do with digital marketing and start-ups, I’ve been busy sharing my thoughts on how business people as individuals can stand up and stand out in their niche through their personal brands.

Asked to share some more insight based on a LinkedIn post I wrote a few weeks ago, I’ve also recorded an interview on how to present yourself with true confidence and sincerity for a local job network as well.

This immense interest has given us much food for thought on how we can expand our personal branding services in 2015, so stay tuned…..

Hope you enjoy listening and reading and, as always, do let us know what you think and if you have anything to add!

Cheers,

Mel

We had a blast at the Seattle Interactive Conference a couple of weeks ago. As always, we came back with the wisdom of some amazing speakers to share with you.

Geoff Colon from Microsoft, a former Brooklyn DJ, talking about “remix culture” was one of the most interesting sessions that shed some light on the future of digital marketing.
Similar thoughts on how digital was transforming the way marketers should be thinking about engaging with consumers were also shared by other speakers from the conference such as Joanna Lord from Porch and Michael King from iPullRank.

Remix is everywhere

According to Geoff speaking at his session “Social by Design,” everything is a “remix” because people are constantly creating value from value others have created.

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One of the other speakers at the Digital East event I gave a talk at a few weeks ago was Andy Beal, CEO and Founder of online reputation tracking tool, Trackur.com.

I’ve known Andy since his SEO days and when he founded Marketing Pilgrim, so in this interview we talk about how he got into the online reputation management space, how he thinks brands and CEOs should approach online reputation and personal branding, and where he believes PR teams should start when letting the executives in their company start using social media to promote themselves and the company brand.

He also give us some advice on what to do with Google Plus, now authorship has been dropped.

Thanks to Andy and the crew from Digital East for lettings us film at the event!

Enjoy!

We’ll be having many more Delightful Conversations like this, so subscribe to our Delightful Communications YouTube Channel and you won’t miss a single one!

Cheers,

Mel