Today Alex Guzik and I attend the Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau Digital Marketing and Social Media Workshop. The event was hosted by Register Media and featured several different breakout sessions with local and national speakers. We took away good reminders and a few new tips from the event. We wanted to recap five key takeaways of good digital marketing.
Topics: content marketing, SEO, paid ads, social media
Last week, a few of us from Spindustry Digital attended the Iowa Tourism Conference (#iatourism) in Waterloo (@WaterlooIowa). We built the site for Travel Iowa, so it was a great chance to see how their team interacts with the tourism and destination marketing professionals around the state who are learning how digital marketing is changing their world.
First, it was interesting just how much of the program centered on digital marketing.
Topics: marketing strategy, social media
In many ways, part of our job as marketers is to also play the role of doctors. No, you will not find M.D. behind my name on my email signature, but I do follow the same process of listening, diagnosing and providing a solution for the ailment. Unfortunately, I cannot provide a prescription for compliance setbacks or lack of resources, but I can outline ideas for combating social media related pain points. Here are a few typical challenges we see from businesses and action items you can take to resolve problem areas.
Topics: social media
The moment after a dramatic landing of a US Airways flight into the Hudson River, Jim Hanrahan, an onlooker, took out his phone and tweeted.
Topics: social media
Four Tips for More Effectively Using Twitter for Business
With the overwhelming growth in social media over the past few years, everyone is clamoring to find the best formulas to engage customers and increase sales. Twitter has grown to over 200 million users since its launch in 2006. The 140 character limit on a post keeps the listener constantly engaged as they thirst for that next snippet of information. In reviewing recent articles from Mashable, PC Magazine and Forbes about how Twitter can promote and benefit business, we have narrowed the list to four key best practices that we believe you need to consider when tweeting.
1. View Activity
This feature of Twitter under the “Discover” tab allows you to see what your followers are favoriting, retweeting and who they are following. This allows your business to see who they need to target according to what their current followers are engaging in. You may find new people or business to connect with or new content ideas to use in your marketing plan.
Topics: twitter, social media, marketing tips
We know. As a business person, you, or the company you work for, are constantly inundated with requests to connect and talk and share and like and pin. It can be daunting, confusing, time consuming and purposeless if you don’t know what you’re doing or why you’re doing it.
Without a doubt, the social aspect of the web is here to stay. The platform for individuals’ voices to be heard has changed us and changed our businesses. Instead of avoiding, ignoring or admonishing these tools, find a balance where they become purposeful and impactful to you and your business.
Topics: linkedin, social media
We’re 72 days into 2013; how is your marketing plan holding up? If you haven’t finalized it yet, or even if you haven’t started, don’t worry. It’s never too late to start, though we’d recommend doing it sooner rather than later. No matter what stage you’re at in the process, here are some helpful tips to get the ball rolling:
Create a Plan with Purpose
Having an outlined marketing plan will better help your marketing dollars align with your sales goals. To create an effective marketing plan, map out your goals, set target dates and then align those goals with your marketing spend. While you may not know what every Tweet is going to say in 2013, having a few areas of heavy focus will help build a foundation for your communication strategy in 2013.
Topics: SEO, mobile marketing, social media, marketing tips
Most Americans will tell you that time is not on their side. The vast majority will timidly admit that they don’t have time to read a book, garden or go for a stroll. However, the typical American who wishes they had more hours in the day is spending an average of 77 precious minutes per day on Pinterest. Pinterest may not be ranked king of social media, but with more than a 145% spike in unique visitors since January 2011 (roughly 4 million unique visits per day), it is certainly becoming significant.
Topics: pinterest, social media
For those who may still be wondering if the social media craze is a fad or not, here’s another real-life application that is, indeed, here to stay.
Topics: social media
When discussing social media engagement, I often ask people to rewind to the days when they were still in school. Most students won’t answer questions or participate in discussions until someone else has volunteered to be the first to begin the dialogue. Much like a classroom of students, many adults are still afraid to be the first to “raise their hand” during a presentation or when utilizing social media.
Topics: twitter, event marketing, social media