Marketing Autopsy Blog » Marketing Communications

How to Benefit from Twitter Trending Topics and Keep Your Marketing Integrity and Ethics Too

Cuong Huynh — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:00:35 +0000

Trending topics on Twitter is a double-edged sword. It gives users instant snapshots of what the hot topics are on Twitter. At the same time it opens the floodgate for Twitter spams and misinformation. I’m all for pushing the latest and greatest tools for marketing use, but it should be done responsibly.

We all know Twitter is free (at least for now.) And because it is a social tool, interestingly, Twitter itself can potentially be destroyed by how its users use it – mass destruction so to speak. Spams and misinformation will only have negative effects on Twitter, which eventually will hurt the whole community.

So here are some tips on how to use Twitter trending topics to your benefits while maintaining your own integrity and ethics.

Get involved in hot and active conversations.
Stay on topic and be relevant.
Have fun, be yourself, and help others.
Leave self-promotions at the door (or at the keyboard.)
Un-follow those who regularly and knowingly start and/or re-tweet spams and falsification.
And most importantly: Don’t try to benefit from Twitter trending topics.

Share your views with a comment below.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

How to Benefit from Twitter Trending Topics and Keep Your Marketing Integrity and Ethics Too

Blogging for SEO Benefits, Plus a Great Side Effect

Cuong Huynh — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:36:51 +0000

Blogging can bring excellent and relatively quick search engine optimization (SEO) benefits to a company’s website. Catfish over at BusinessOnline has some great tips for marketers in the blogging department to help with search engine optimization (SEO). Called “3 Top Ways Blogging Enhances Your SEO Campaign“, the article touches on the 3 easy-for-executive-to-understand reasons why blogging is important for any corporation.

In a nutshell, the 3 benefits blogging can bring your business are:

Blogging creates new content opportunities. With blogging, a marketer can write marketing content relevant to any desired marketing message or campaign with very little effort, and without messing up the main corporate website. For blogging to be effective, all blog content should be keyword focused.
Blogging creates new internal link opportunities. Because of new keyword focused content being generated regularly, there are ample of opportunities for internal linking between keywords and other relevant blog posts and articles. And when you automate this process with tools such as the Cross Linker WordPress Plugin for WordPress (as suggested by Catfish), the benefits can be multiplied ten-fold, as older content are given new life with every new keyword linking back to them.
Blogging creates new external link opportunities. Blogging by its nature encourages communication between readers and content creators. If your content is captivating, interesting and useful to others, they will want to link back to your source article, vote for or recommend your content to others on social sites, and subscribe to your content through RSS feeds.

These are all excellent reasons for companies to get into blogging. But there is an additional good side effect from a marketer’s point of view. Blogging provides a critical, yet almost forgotten basic skill a good marketer must possess: the writing skill.

Anyone and everyone can claim to have excellent verbal and written communication skills. But let’s be honest to ourselves and our customers, how much formal marketing communications do you as a marketer actually write? And how often? The fact is we get bogged down in everyday to-do lists and deadlines that we no longer write proper marketing communications. Blogging brings good writing back to marketing communications.

And you know the saying is still true. With practice comes perfection.

So are you and your organization blogging? If not, what are some of the hindering factors? Share your experience with us.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Blogging for SEO Benefits, Plus a Great Side Effect

For Marketers: This Is Not The Time To Retreat!

Cuong Huynh — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:47:48 +0000

This economy is not getting better any time soon. I think most people by now would agree, whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist. In fact it does not matter which side one’s on, because being either is not going to change current situation. There are only two things that matter: the external market conditions which you can’t control, and us ourselves which we can control.

Markets have always been cyclical. Adding on top of this are external unforeseeable events that either cause the market to go up and down, to improve or worsen. Lots of theories and analyses will be explored for many years to come. For me I like to keep it simple. Let’s get to the core of a marketer as an individual.

First, understand that it will get better, then it will go down again, then again it will improve, and so on. We can’t worry too much about this. We do need to keep an eye on it however. Meanwhile our energy must be directed toward improving business. To me this last statement is true in both good times and bad times.

So during this tough time, let’s not retreat and take the ‘wait and see’ stand. Out job is to help our clients/employers take products and services to market. People will always need products and services. Even with “luxury” things, there are always people who can afford them and/or want them. As smart marketers, we need to recognize the changing market winds and readjust ourselves. This means learn new tools and techniques, be more creative and innovative, and work harder.

It just makes sense.

How about you, what are your thoughts? Do you have a different perspective? What are some other good advice for a marketer in this environment?

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

For Marketers: This Is Not The Time To Retreat!

Why Companies Should Not Get Into Social Media.

Cuong Huynh — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:50:41 +0000

It’s always scarier, and more difficult, for large companies to embrace social media than for smaller companies to do so. It’s been discussed widely around the web and blogosphere, and is a general consensus at least for now.

As time progresses, however, it’s refreshing to learn about larger companies actually making the effort. As Lee Odden posted on Online Marketing Blog in Oct 30, 2008, How Big Companies Use Social Media @ BlogWell, big guys like Dell, Walmart, Cisco, UPS and Home Depot are seeing values in social media, and are making a corporate effort to get involved. The Blogwell conference, organized by GasPedal, aimed to help large corporations navigate the minefields of social media marketing.

According the Blog Council, which is a community of senior executives in charge of social media at the largest corporations in the world, best practices for corporate social media participation include the following checklist:

Disclosure of Identity
Personal/Unofficial Blogging and Outreach
Blogger Relations
Compensation and Incentives
Agency and Contractor Disclosure
Creative Flexibility

Mr. Ogden blogs that “Disclosure and honesty are key”, which I think is right on. He further lists a number of characteristics that companies should take with them from the Blogwell experience:

Listen before you act.
Get to know your audience well.
Make sure you know the rules of engagement before you start interacting.
Then, when you do speak, be candid and transparent.
Disclose, disclose, disclose.
Make sure your legal department is on board with all your innovations.
But most importantly be human, and be receptive to the changes.

These all provide a solid foundation for companies to base their social media marketing efforts on. The single common thread that exists through all these and other guidelines, and will continue to come up time and again, is that corporations need to realize that in social media networking/marketing, there isn’t a corporate voice any more. There are only individual voices now. One can see why corporations are hesitant to jump in.

Traditionally, companies employ a rep/spokesperson/PR person to interface directly with the outside world. These individuals are charged with relaying to the public a consistent message and image about the company and from the company, and their activities are always coordinated with internal functions. From a company’s standpoint, it is important that this is done. Whether publicly or privately held, they have to approach this in a responsible way. There’s too much at stake, too much to lose.

One does not expect corporations to change their ways on a dime. In fact I think, in order to get started with social media marketing, companies should work within their means, but they must make a decision to move forward with it. In addition to the list above, I would add the following important elements to ensure a successful corporate social media marketing effort.

Social media marketing should be treated as any other new marketing campaign. It’s not reasonable to assume that social media marketing will replace all other marketing activities, therefore it has to live along side of them, along side the other marketing campaigns. By treating it as a campaign, the marketing team has to define its goals, budget, resources, time frame, etc. just like any other campaign. This way, there will be a much better chance for it to be approved, and it will stands on its own merits as a solid marketing effort, not as a fad that executives should be wary about.
Expected costs for the social media campaign should be realistically estimated. One may expect that social media activities only require time from someone on the team to post blogs, read and respond to other blogs, build online presence on different sites, etc. However, in a corporate environment, the marketing team should also budget for education time and team knowledge development, time to educate and coordinated with other decision makers on this thing called social media, and ongoing communication with them on the general direction, strategy and status of the social media marketing effort.
A clear corporate communications policy must be created for social media. Even though social media marketing is on an individual level, corporation communications must be aware of who within the company is saying what and on what subject. The goal here is not to control, restrict or influence (unless there are good business reasons to do so), but to be aware, coordinate and support. I’m sure the general counsel will have his/her own views about this as well. The key here is to recognize that social media marketing needs to be understood by the entire corporate team so that a strong internal policy can be written to allow marketing to get on with it. Then make sure all employees are aware of this policy. Social media marketing will force a company to update its corporate culture.

I believe, without at least doing the above, companies, big or small, will set themselves up for failure.

Here are some questions for you:

Do you agree that social media marketing should be understood by and coordinated with other decision makers in a corporation, and it’s not merely a marketing department endeavor?
What do you think the real costs are for a corporation to start an effective social media marketing campaign? What are the main considerations?
I’m still not sure that, as a blanket statement, smaller companies can start social media marketing much easier, faster and more effectively than larger companies. Is this just a myth?

About Cuong Huynh

Cuong Huynh — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:17:38 +0000

Cuong Huynh advises businesses and individuals on marketing communications, social networking, and new media strategies.

Specialties:

Marketing Communications, Brand Identity, Social Media & Viral Marketing, Trade Shows, Press Releases, Public Relations, Marketing Metrics and ROI, Advertising, Marketing Plan, Client/Vendor Management, Creative Services, Art Direction, Search Engine Optimization, Web 2.0, Blogs, Web Applications, Graphic Design, Marketing Video, Desktop Publishing

View my presentation: Social Media Marketing: Creating Cost Effective Marketing Channels For Small and Medium Businesses.

If you need to talk to me about your social media marketing strategy, please contact me via the Contact Page.

View my profile on cthmedia.net. And if you haven’t done so, subscribe to my RSS feed.

Also follow me on Twitter
@CuongHuynh
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Enjoy my other blogs:

Marketing Autopsy Blog » Marketing Communications

How to Benefit from Twitter Trending Topics and Keep Your Marketing Integrity and Ethics Too

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Blogging for SEO Benefits, Plus a Great Side Effect

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For Marketers: This Is Not The Time To Retreat!

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Why Companies Should Not Get Into Social Media.

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About Cuong Huynh

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