Digital Strategy Archive

When I started my career at Microsoft over a decade ago, my colleague at the time, Carolyn Miller, suggested I read a book about blogging called “Naked Conversations” by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

I can safely say that book changed my life.

My initial role at Microsoft was as a Pan-European Search Specialist helping to launch Microsoft adCenter (now Bing Ads) but after a while, I was tapped up for a community role to help advertisers “help themselves” by creating and disseminating useful content on blogs and forums.

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Earlier this month I was invited onto Webcertain TV to share some thoughts and wisdom on how to get started with influencer marketing.

In this 12 minutes video, we discuss the ins and outs of influencer marketing including how to get started with influencer marketing, how to integrate influencer marketing with your social media and content strategy, how to find and approach influencers online, what influencer marketing technologies are available out there, what to measure and how to align your influencer program with your business goals, and more.

Check it out…

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2016: Facebook is the first social media to integrate VR in any user daily browsing.

What does that really mean? For the first time, users can easily share 360 photos to Facebook, making content and views more immersive and creative to the masses.

The best part: taking a photo and sharing it is actually pretty simple!

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In a digital world, content is the currency of influence. Obviously, most marketers nowadays are aware of the importance of content marketing: according to recent studies, 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing, and 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day.

Along with the explosion of content, marketers are challenged to make their voice heard. That’s why influencers should be a part of your content marketing strategy. Traackr Academy of Influencer Marketing recently brought us a new course, Confluence: The Meeting of Content and Influencer Marketing, to help marketers attract and convert customers by aligning influencer and content strategies.

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At Delightful, we believe that brilliant brands are built through people, not just pixels. Compared to branded messages, research shows that people’s words are more likely to be trusted.

As one of our clients from Microsoft, Geoffrey Colon, the author of Disruptive Marketing: What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, and Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal, expressed in his recent LinkedIn article, brands will continue to be ignored while the influencers you pay may run into the same issues of all paid endorsements. It’s really time to pay attention to your employees who can be the most transparent, authentic, and trustworthy advocates for your brand.

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If you’re in the business of building media lists for PR outreach, you may use an established database from a company like Cision or PRNewswire.

While those tools are an excellent resource, they can be expensive, so we’ve put together a video for Majestic.com (I’m their US Brand Ambassador) to show how you can use link data to figure out who is writing about what AND know how influential and authoritative they are as a writer or publication.

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A shift has occurred in Social Media KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). While we love audience growth, we are really working to increase engagement. We don’t just want likes, we want shares. Promotional messages have become routine, meaning focus is put on response rate and time.

So, what kind of customer data should we be concentrating on for improvement?

With some data and insights from bitly’s collaborative Ebook How to Improve Social Metrics That Actually Matter, let’s get started!

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A couple of back, I was invited to join a virtual event – All About Branding – to share some insights with the SEMPO community.

The discussion was brilliantly moderated by Dana Todd, of whom I have been a big fan for years. I learned a lot too from Francine Carb who was on the panel as she has oodles of brand experience from way back.

Watch the video recording or read the recap to find out what we talked about  from monitoring competition and personal branding, to influencer marketing and branding measurement, and a whole lot more…

Hope you enjoy it and let us know if you have anything to add!

Cheers,

@MelCarson

At the end of last year, those nice people from Vizion Interactive asked me to have a chat on camera at the Digital Summit in Dallas.

I was at the event in my capacity as Brand Ambassador for Majestic.com, so chose to talk about broadening their audience beyond SEOs and link building and how important links are to the public relations industry.

Are you a PR pro? Are you using link data for competitive analysis and PR planning and reporting?

Watch the video to give you some ideas and inspiration!

Warning! I get a bit passionate towards the end!

Cheers,

@MelCarson

Earlier this month, I was invited to share some insights on How to Make eCommerce Business Stand Out by Creating a Branding Action Plan with the listeners of eCommerce Marketing Podcast.

In the latest episode of the podcast series hosted by Robert Kilonzo, Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies to Grow Your Store, I was asked to reveal the secrets of how to make your brand stand out, top mistakes people make with building their brands, and tools to put together a successful branding strategy.

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