Marketing Genius is a series created by BuzzFarmers to give virtual high-fives to anyone who develops a unique (and brilliant) marketing idea worth talking about.

When Heineken took a step back from their holiday marketing and considered that it’d be really easy to tell people to “Drink Heineken” but harder to convince them to actually do it, they must have stopped and paused a bit longer than other beer companies.

Touching on the guilt that most people have around the holiday season every time they buy something for themselves, Heineken partnered with Krups to create BeerTender alongside a Facebook application (BeerFriender) that encourages you to “gift” a BeerTender to a random Facebook stranger.

According to the promotion, in return, that person will quietly also “gift” one to you; Thus eliminating the potential guilt of buying for yourself.

This is a bit genius because Heineken knows they can’t sell beer on Facebook, but they can still put themselves in front of everyone, making a clever impression without it.

And of course, according to their Terms of Use, “the Application enables you receive, upload and share information and content about Heineken, the Heineken BeerTender®, and other Heineken products and services.” Not a bad exchange, especially not for Krups who’s likely taking a bulk of the sale with no necessary marketing on their part.

The only thing? We’re not sure it truthfully pairs anyone with anyone else. According to their sales page, “When you use BeerFriender to buy a BeerTender for yourself, it arrives giftwrapped and with a fancy card, so it looks like a gift from someone else.” So eliminating the guilt of explaining to your partner or spouse? Sure. Knowing that little Jimmy gets one less present because of your addiction to shiny beer-drinking paraphernalia? That one’s on you!

UrbanDaddy

They cater to the self-induced elite class of people (for real, or pretend) who like expensive things, expensive vacations and once-in-a-lifetime almost-affordable experiences like private dinners with famous chefs, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Brunches, even a freaking Halloween Costume Concierge Service. Personally, I love UrbanDaddy, which is why I can talk smack.

UrbanDaddy was the first “deal” site I ever signed up for (yes, even before Groupon) based on the once-in-a-lifetime experiences they seem to dig up and develop for their users. On the blog, they’re just documenting them. When you’re a “Perks” member (aka an email list member) you can actually get access to these sorts of things at a barely out-of-reach price, as far as impulse purchases go.

So really, UrbanDaddy might have a great blog, but they make their money through email and via social media traffic that is likely coming in through their email subscribers. UrbanDaddy wants you on their list.

That’s why I loved their tactic of swallowing new subscribers all at once.

Albeit a little on the darkside, this post-email signup pop-up (hello mouthful) takes no prisoners. The moment you’ve signed up to be notified via email about their offers, they follow up with another screen that asks you to also “like” them on Facebook, “follow” them on Twitter, and even download their app.

There’s likely a strategy to that order also. The visibility on Facebook probably kills their Twitter traffic for the type of deals they talk about that thrive will supplemental images. In any case, check out the pop up:

So you like us enough to join our email list, why don’t you go ahead and start adhering yourself to our brains too! All in all an excellent strategy for hooking your readers in while they’re the most interested in what you’re doing. When I added a “like” button to the thank-you page for one of my clients, their Facebook “likes” went up over 1000% in the first month. So, I can attest to the fact that this strategy is no joke.

What do you think of this method? Have you tried this on your own sites? What were your results?

Marketing Genius is a series created by BuzzFarmers to give virtual high-fives to anyone who develops a unique (and brilliant) marketing idea worth talking about.

AppSumo is one of the few “daily deal” emails I look forward to and still subscribe to. In their own words, “This fat-ass Sumo sends you one MASSIVE money-saving deal on tech stuff for startups (like apps and software)….Everyday.” Font packages, training videos, apps, you name it.

Patrick and I deeply admire AppSumo’s creator Noah Kagan and all of his ventures, but two things that AppSumo itself does fantastically well: writing copy and getting their deals shared.

When faced with blasting their readers with soul-sucking jargon or throwing in a swear word, they’re happy to drop the f-bomb. Their copy is second to none and follows the same mantra as Groupon, who’d rather turn funny people into funny writers, rather than trying to turn a writer into a funny writer.

But all that copy won’t do them any good if nobody is reading it right? And the only way that AppSumo is going to get people to buy what people are selling is to convince as many folks as possible to share the deals. Like most daily deal sites, they provide an incentive for anyone who buys something via a link that you share. Their deal is $10.

So today I came across one of those darth vader pop-ups (you know, where they darken the background and all that jazz) on AppSumo that was more share-worthy than just talking about it in a 140 character tweet. This is what their pop-up looks like when you hang out on the page too long.

Oh hello there like button. You fit so pleasantly on this pop up that is reminiscent of a note I once wrote to a cute boy in third grade. “Do you like me? Check yes or no.” Do you like this deal on AppSumo? Hit like or hate. I don’t even know what the “hate” button does, other than close the window. Here’s to hoping it doesn’t decide which deals to serve me in the future. I’m a button pusher, you know?

In any case, this is very clever, do you agree? The only plugin I know that does something similar is Social Traffic Pop for WordPress, but feel free to pitch in any other plugins you know of in the comments!

Amanda & Patrick: Ready for some grape stomping.

“Bringing Napa home”, at the Jonathan Edwards Vineyard/Winery Harvest Festival

If you’ve ever vacationed in Napa, California you’re probably like the rest of us suckers, trying to “bring Napa home” and recreate the experience wherever it is that you live. You start by paying more attention to wine tastings at your local liquor stores, then you find wineries in your state that are a reasonable distance to drive.

If you’re like Patrick and I, you might start hopping on your local “wine trail” and make a weekend out of it. In fact, Patrick and I drove from Rhode Island to Colorado and paved our own wine trail.

Sadly, it’s hard to bring a place like Napa home. A town and area where you can drive down a single road, in valleys and between mountains, to stop at big beautiful wineries every five minutes or so. Some are small and quaint where you might spend three hours making friends with the owners and trying secret barrels in the back. And others are big with incredibly landscaped grounds where you can picnic and take in the fresh air.

Of course, everything is made better with a sip of wine here and there, which you remember based half on your experience and half what it tastes like.

Wine tasting is an emotional hobby. Every glass you drink and bottle you buy reminds you of a day, time and a place. Speaking of which…

Day & Time: Afternoon, a random weekend, sometime in August.

Place: Jonathan Edwards Vineyard and Winery in North Stonington, Connecticut.

Jonathan Edwards Winery was recommended to us highly by one of their wine club members. “The closest thing you’ll get to Napa,” Robert told us. Finding that incredibly hard to believe, Patrick and I ventured to JE the following weekend.

We were not disappointed. There were pristine, incredibly manicured vineyards you could walk around, hidden picnic tables to sit down at, a barrel room you could peruse, and most importantly, a woman pouring our glasses who had no trouble talking about wine for a couple hours. Even better, Jonathan Edwards owns vineyards in Napa, making his wines a beautiful balance between the East and West coast.

Long story short and two cases later, we excitedly decided to attend the Jonathan Edwards Harvest Party. Promises of grape stomping contests, live music, wine tasting and a grilled cheese food truck led us to the front gates where we decided at the last minute, to turn this casual weekend into another BuzzFarmers mini project.

You see, Patrick and myself are do-ers. We love to see, feel and experience everything and go everywhere. The trouble is that it’s so hard to captivate experiences that impact you so deeply, and so we’re starting a series of “captivation videos” where we take an experience and document it from every angle possible. As business people, we obviously hope to turn this into a product, considering the 15-20 hour shoot and production time. In the meantime, we’ll be sharing these videos with you from places of our choosing.

So, as one of the first in a lineup of captivation videos (see Podcamp in 73 seconds too), we give you The Jonathan Edwards Vineyard/Winery Harvest Festival 2011 in 78 seconds. Enjoy!

And P.S. if you have an event or something else you’d like us to capture, get in touch!

My marketing roots didn’t begin in publishing, but they certainly flourished once I got there and I’ve been working intimately with publishers on their social media, SEO, design and email strategies ever since.

So the Mequoda Summit is a guilty pleasure for me. Guilty because it’s fun, and because even I don’t think you should have that much fun at work. Or should you? And even after attending for several years, I’m still excitedly surprised at the quality of people who attend.

And by quality, I’m not referring to the fact that David Zinczenko, Managing Editor of Men’s Health has come to hang out. Or even Steve Sachs, Executive VP, Consumer Marketing & Sales at Time Inc. I could name-drop all day about who I’ve rubbed elbows (and emptied hotel mini bars) with at the Summit.

What I’m referring to is how awesome these folks are. This isn’t your pretentious magazine conference. Regardless of who shows up (which isn’t only publishers, by the way) everyone is there for the same reason—to move his or her business forward.

Most conferences I’ve been to follow the same formula.

1. Get your badge
2. Choose which topics and speakers you like best
3. Enter session you like
4. Speaker spouts off the same rehearsed presentation as he has at the last five conferences
5. Audience claps
6. Food break
7. Repeat

The Summit is a little different because it’s smaller and is reserved for decision-makers and their most passionate employees. While there’s always a speaker or presenter, there’s also more conversation going on from the seats than from the front of the room. Your butt never goes numb and neither does your brain.

Basically, the Mequoda Summit is a giant open discussion where everyone shares their best strategies and their worst strategies. Everyone is open to learning what comes next, and nobody is afraid to ask the big questions. The environment is made so open and comfortable that everyone feels like they’re a part of the event. And somehow, they keep it all together and on-topic at all the right times.

There’s no real way for us to truly capture this event in the way that it’s meant to be represented, however at the last Mequoda Summit we decided at the last minute to use our iPhones to put together this 60-second video in the hopes that we could give everyone at least a taste of the awesomeness that is the Mequoda Summit (and they didn’t pay me to say that or make the video either.) Enjoy!

The Face of @ColonelTribune

Take a lesson from the Chicago Tribune on Twitter and increase followers by 2298% just by being human

I’ve taught social media to publishers across the country and it breaks my heart when someone tells me during a workshop, “oh we’re just pushing feeds… The New York Times does it and it works for them.” Or similarly, “we’ve just been automatically reposting blog content and it seems to be working fine.”

Working fine? That’s called working “good enough”. People have RSS readers, so what incentive are you giving them to follow you on Twitter? How does this translate to your other marketing efforts? Are you always doing the bare minimum?

This is like comparing your personal Twitter account to Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter account. As a normal average human on this earth, I can’t do exactly as Ashton Kutcher does because I am not Ashton Kutcher. I haven’t been an Abercrombie model turned TV actor turned movie star. Therefore, what works for him isn’t going to get me six million followers.

The New York Times is the head honcho when it comes to social media popularity. A newspaper with 951,063 daily circulation has The New York Times Facebook page close to 800,000 fans and the @NYTimes Twitter account coming up on 3 million followers. The Wall Street Journal more than doubles them in terms of daily circulation, but are way behind in online presence.

According to TweetStats, The New York Times:

• posts 39.8 tweets per day
• retweets at a rate of 0.18% – and only to other NYTimes accounts
• replies/mentions at a rate of 0.02% – again, only to NYTimes properties

In comparison, the Chicago Tribune is the ninth most circulated newspaper in the U.S. with 516,032 daily circulation, with  The Chicago Tribune Facebook Page that is nearing 20,000 fans and an official @ChicagoTribune Twitter account with just 35,000 followers.

Chicago Tribune on Twitter: How They Turned a Brand into a Personality

So, the ninth largest circulated newspaper in the U.S. with an official Twitter account that ranks 8th came up with the brilliant idea of creating a separate, personal Twitter account for the Chicago Tribune.

While @ChicagoTribune is ranked 8th in terms of Twitter followers for national newspapers, they actually rank #2 with a more personal account called @ColonelTribune. The @ColonelTribune account is architected to serve the average news-reader and isn’t catering to the news junkie that subscribes to newspaper feeds as a replacement to their RSS feed.

The @ColonelTribune account hand-selects articles to tweet about so that they don’t overwhelm their readers and every headline is rewritten in the form of an engaging discussion-starter.

@ColonelTribune - A more gentlemanly version of @ChicagoTribune

@ChicagoTribune - Pushing content, no bio, following 0, relying on brand

Here’s the thing, I’m not even going to trash-talk the Chicago Tribune for their branded Twitter feed. Sure, they’re missing a bio, they’re not following anyone, and they’re relying on their brand to get Twitter followers. All forgiven.

Why? I’m not going to offer any type of criticism because what they’ve done separately is brilliant.

For those who only want headlines, they’ve got @ChicagoTribune. There are over 35k people on Twitter who are perfectly happy to use this feed in order to get their news. They don’t need anyone to reply to a question, they don’t need any kind of engagement, they simply want the news.

However, for those 845k people on Twitter who want a little personality with their news, they’ve created @ColonelTribune. This account is “the more gentlemanly version of @ChicagoTribune” and always re-writes headlines to be more interesting, @ replies to people and is seen as “the face” of The Chicago Tribune, even if he is simply a mascot.

Chicago Tribune Headline: 'Drunkorexia' a growing trend among college students

Ahead of the curve, the Chicago Tribune created “Colonel Tribune” as a face of the brand back in March of 2008 when they assembled a social media team to work on building their company image via networks like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. They immediately saw an eight percent increase in page views ontop the millions of pageviews they were already getting.

Daniel Honigman, former Social Media Strategist for the Tribune Media Group told Mashable last year:

“Essentially, we wanted to find our audience regardless of the medium.  The Colonel acts as a touch point for the Tribune and serves as our voice on the web. Thus we needed a front man, which turned into Colonel Tribune. Who is kind of a goofy man about town but is an actual person. He would even answer questions that you might have.”

Is @ChicagoTribune dead on Twitter?

What I noticed while researching this article was that the @ChicagoTribune feed has been down for almost a month. This made me question whether they had abandoned the account in favor of the more popular account, or if the feed was simply broken and they hadn’t noticed yet.

So, I decided to take my question to @ColonelTribune. I did this for two reasons. First, I did it because I wanted to know if I would get a response or if the old man in a paper hat would shun me for asking such a silly question. Second, I did it because I wanted an answer and it it’s hard to get one through email.

To my surprise, @ColonelTribune answered me in less than two minutes.

When I asked Bill Adee, VP of Digital Development & Operations for the Tribune Media Group about the stagnant @ChicagoTribune account, he confirmed that they hadn’t abandoned the account and that they “only recently re-gained control over it” and are “going to fix up the page and the feed soon.”

He also noted that they do in fact believe “the @ColonelTribune account is the important one for engaging with [their] audience and learning from it.”

Comparing site traffic between the big-wigs

In general, site traffic for all of the large newspaper sites has seen a dive over the last year. Even the Wall Street Journal, which doubles The New York Times in daily circulation is down 36% in terms of site traffic, going from almost 12 million to 7.5 million this year.

The New York Times isn’t much better—down 17% from last year. This is coming from almost 21 million unique visitors last year to a little more than 17 million this year.

The Chicago Tribune has seen the least decrease of the three, but is still down about 16%, coming from close to 3 million unique visitors per month down to 2.4 million. However, they did see a 15% hike between the months of May and June.

As you can see, all newspaper sites have taken a digger in terms of site traffic. However, smart newspapers like the Chicago Tribune believe in the power of social media. In fact, they’ve seen the benefits first-hand.

After all, the Colonel Tribune project started based on a surge in traffic that they initially got from Digg. A small local article got 16,000 page views on the day it was published and dropped down to 1,300 the next day. This is typical.

What wasn’t typical, was the 43,300 page views they got 9 days later when it got picked up by Digg and drove more than 126,000 more unique views by the end of the month.

After this, they put together the small social media team I wrote about earlier, and have been putting their faith in social media ever since.

The takeaway from this discussion

Speaking in generalities, a newspaper doesn’t need to work hard at getting thousands of followers. When you’re the third most circulated newspaper in the U.S. like The New York Times, you don’t need to adhere to the rules of engagement that we hold other companies to. Would it be nice? Sure. Would it increase their followers even more? Probably. Will The New York Times survive social media without responding to @ replies and without retweeting other newspapers? Without a doubt.

Even though the Chicago Tribune is still considered high up on the totem pole of newspaper circulation (they’re #9), the company understands the importance of leveraging personality and charisma on social networks. So many large publications think that they are untouchable and that they don’t need a social media to get by, while smaller publications think they can build their online brand by watching what the leaders are doing.

The big secret: Many newspaper publishers, especially the big ones, have no idea what they’re doing. Trust me, I’ve been to enough publishing conferences and networked at enough events to tell you that everyone in the industry is still watching what everyone else is doing. It’s like the blind leading the blind.

The lesson: Don’t copy your idols unless they’re doing something that you are personally impressed by.

The solution is to close your eyes and ignore what everyone else is doing. You’re a consumer… what do YOU respond to? When the Chicago Tribune put together their new social media team back in 2008, they were literally starting from scratch because nobody in the industry was leveraging the medium successfully yet.

Social media is your chance to stand out and create a unique online presence. By doing what everyone else is doing, you’re simply fading into the background.

]]> http://buzzfarmers.com/using-twitter-for-marketing/chicago-tribune-on-twitter-the-case-study-that-backs-up-engagement/feed/ 6 http://buzzfarmers.com/internet-marketing-ideas/wasp-marketing-why-wasps-make-great-internet-marketers/ http://buzzfarmers.com/internet-marketing-ideas/wasp-marketing-why-wasps-make-great-internet-marketers/#comments Mon, 04 Oct 2010 23:31:35 +0000 Amanda MacArthur | @amaaanda http://buzzfarmers.com/?p=170 Imagine if wasps flew around in little pea coats, striped pants and tiny top hats instead of going around stinging people. Wasp marketing could be the new thing—they’d just fly around whispering Internet marketing tips in people’s ears and the world would be blessed with great websites and optimized content.

Unfortunately, wasps are too busy being eaten by humans in the form of delicious figs and turning cockroaches into zombies to get that far. If they could put that all of that behind them, here are a few reasons why wasps would be better off packing it in and and getting their Marketing MBA.

The Fig Wasp

Source: DailyThoughts.com

Did you know that when you eat a fig, the crunchy bits inside are likely dead wasps? No there aren’t tarantulas in your bananas and you probably don’t swallow several spiders every night when you sleep, but yes, there are wasps in every fig you eat.

In fact, figs are technically a flower, and require a wasp to pollinate in order to live. In return, the fig provides food and shelter for the momma wasps and their babies.

Here’s where it gets gross: When the momma wasp lays her eggs inside of the fig, the route is too narrow and her wings and antennae get ripped off. From this point, she can’t get out.

If she’s landed in a male fig, then all of her male babies will hatch, dig tunnels for the girls to get out, and the males will die inside. It’s not a great thing to be a male fig wasp.

If she’s landed in a female fig however, this long thing called the stylus will prevent her from laying her eggs, and she’ll just end up dying from starvation, exhaustion, or maybe just loneliness.

That said, who wants to eat a fig now? Sure the figs enzymes will break up the carcass and turn it into protein, but it still makes you reconsider that package of Fig Newtons, now doesn’t it?

Why Fig Wasps Would Make Excellent Internet Marketers

Source: blogs.theage.com.au

Let’s just relate this to planting a seed and the long-tail approach shall we? As Internet Marketers, we know that we’re not going to catch someone every time they enter our website. Ideally, of course. However, it doesn’t make us a bad marketer just because someone hit the back button. We’re not always what they’re looking for.

For example, when the momma fig wasp gets trapped in the female fig flower, she’s done for. She starves, she dies, and then we eat her. If she lands in a male fig, she lays her babies, they live, they grow, and they move on to pollinate other flowers.

Here’s the point: It’s kind of like an A/B split test. One of your tests has to outperform the other, and one of the tests will undoubtedly crash and burn. One might create 100 new buyers today, and the other may create zero. So you either made babies, or you got stuck in a fig with no wings or antennae.

At least wasps are brave enough to make that call. They have no idea if a fig will kill them or let them lay eggs, but they burrow inside anyway. The payoff perhaps is that as wasps evolve, maybe they’ll eventually be able to tell the difference between male and female figs and live a little longer.

If we as Internet Marketers test our buttons, layouts, copy and headlines, we too discover what element of a page is creating the most value, and which ones can be replaced to ensure more productive websites.

The Emerald Cockroach Wasp

Source: Blogs.DiscoverMagazine.com

This wasp is something out of a horror movie. The wasp stings a cockroach, not paralyzing it, but somewhat giving it a lobotomy so that it does whatever the wasp wants it to. Then, the crafty momma wasp leads the cockroach back to the wasp den. Like a good, obedient, zombified cockroach, it does as its told by momma wasp—even letting her lay an egg inside of it.

But it gets better… The baby wasp needs something to feed on, so the cockroach needs to stay alive during the entire laying, hatching and growing process so that the wasp baby can eat it for nutrients. The cockroach finally dies five weeks later when the baby busts out, fat and happy.

You don’t have to step on a wasp nest to be turned off by these little manipulative winged creatures now, but dang do they make great Internet Marketers and here’s why.

Why Emerald Cockroach Wasps Would Make Excellent Internet Marketers

These wasps in particular know how to “get in the minds and bodies” of those they are trying to influence.

If they were marketers, they’d be creating content (babies) that their users (zombified cockroaches) were already looking for. What if the cockroach really wanted a little baby planted in its brain? I mean, heck, they can live up to 10 years depending on the species, and who wants to live on garbage and with angry humans for 10 years anyway?

Here’s the point: Wasps don’t just kill the cockroach and turn its body into a womb, just like we don’t just throw out advertisements and care less about what our ROI is.

The wasp takes careful approach in convincing the cockroach that what they really want is to go into a cave and sacrifice their life for a wasp baby.

As Internet Marketers, it’s our job to convince people that what they really want is our product. Our venom is search engine optimization. We take a careful approach in researching keywords for our sites and blog posts.

We try to write things that people are already searching for. When results come up in Google, they don’t know that we’ve specifically targeted them, but if we’ve done a good job—we’re answering their question. If we’ve done an even better job, we’re collecting an email address for further communication or writing a crafty up-sell into a paid product.

I wouldn’t call our customers and readers zombies, but the majority of Internet searchers are just typing into a search engine however they think they will find a result. By “getting into the minds and bodies” of our customers by doing a little research first, we’re more likely to do like a wasp and get them into a cave to have our babies.

Or rather, to our website and into a position to buy a product.

This weekend a couple of us left the BuzzFarm for the big city and stayed in Cambridge, MA for Podcamp Boston 5. We have a combined total of having attended 7 Podcamps in both Boston and New York and whole-heartedly agreed that this event was the best one yet.

It wasn’t as big as recent Podcamps due to the lack of room in the facility (Microsoft NERD Center), but the intimacy of the crowd and quality of the people who attended was just remarkable.

We’ve got a whole big breakdown for you below, but let’s start with a kick-butt video intro, cause you know we love video!

As always, the “hallways” are often where you learn the most at Podcamp. Let’s be honest… half the crowd at Podcamp is working in the same field, competing for the same clients: businesses who want to start using social media.

The non-competitive nature of Podcamp brings about exciting new business relationships between would-be competitors and opens doors for others who are looking to connect with the networks of those would-be competitors. Even if we offer similar services, we all have our own unique views, ideas and strategies.

To make a friend at Podcamp is to open a new door for your business. You can’t say that about most conferences you attend. I love Podcamp. There, I said it!

Ok enough mushy stuff. (OMG – I love you! All of you! Ehem…)

Besides all the awesome networking that went on, there was also a whole lot of discussions and sharing to be had. While you might be able to find bits here and there on the #pcb5 Twitter stream, good luck fishing through all the madness!

Instead, here’s what I thought were the most share-able bits and pieces from this weekend. I’ve done my best to give credit wherever I could remember. First the tips, then the tools.

Podcamp Boston Tips & Take-Aways

• The Perfect Podcast Length: The average commute time is between 18-22 minutes, so when you time your own, try to stick to that length. People have started listening to TED Talks in the car for this very reason; they all under 18 minutes.

“Always be creating content. Content is the currency of social media.” -  @davidwells

• Tame Social Media Madness Scientifically: Break down your approach for diving into social media. The always insightful @tamadearrecommends first answering the question, “What am I trying to figure out about social media?” Then figure it out.Next, try practicing with social media, possibly not with an official business account. Look up competitors and gauge what they’re doing. Get into the community to fine tune your skills.Next, find your audience to see what networks they’re on and what tools they’re using. Don’t use platforms that your customers aren’t using. Decide what your desired outcome is.

  Finally, create a plan of attack and go for it. More on all of this here.

“I’ll give you four inbound links for a bag of chips!” - @eastofprov

• The Key to Being a Successful Author: In a group discussion led by @LenEdgerly, it was agreed upon by everyone in the room that being a great marketer is the key to selling a book. Have great contacts, market the crap out of your book, and be a perceived authority.The marketing sells the book, not the actual content.Of course, if you want to keep selling the book, you should probably follow up with being just as good of a writer as a marketer.

“New media is NOT free. Our time is not free and our audience’s time is not free.” – @cspenn

• How to Get More Clients with No Marketing Budget: We’ve already thought of this one (take a look at our referral page), but try employing the help of a “citizens” sales staff. In other words, offer an incentive to anyone who refers you clients. Word of mouth is the best marketing tool.

“Twitter and Facebook seem like public utilities but they’re not; they are private companies and can go away.” – @cspenn

• Time Online Videos According to Content Type: Audiences won’t mind watching a longer video if it’s educational and contains great content. Instructional videos can go longer than news or opinion videos. Marketing videos should be even shorter. @JoselinMane recommends:

• • 30-60 seconds for an ad
  • 60 seconds to 3 minutes for marketing
  • one to seven minutes for a sales video
  • seven to forty-five minutes for an instructional video
  • thirty to ninety minutes for a webinar

Networking tip: start with “Here’s what I know… Here’s what I want to know more about…” – @chrisbrogan

• Study Your Competitors: There are so many ways to analyze your competitors these days. Compete.com will tell you their traffic, while watching Twitter will tell you how they communicate with customers and often give you behind-the-scenes looks at new upcoming products meant for potential customers.Podcamp organizer @chelpixie recommends searching sites like LinkedIn to find job postings from your competitors to see what they need and what direction they’re headed in. Oh, and keep an RSS feed of all your competitors too!

“The Internet is not a medium… By now it is at least an extra large.”

• SEO Video You Put Online: This is another thing we try to remind people time and time again – video has been being indexed for a while now. The advantage here is that by keyword optimizing your videos, you may not be able to land on the front page of Google with an article that has competitive competition, but a video is a much easier. Even better – videos usually show up above the fold.

“If you’ve got something, throw it out there. You could be the chunky tomato sauce of podcasting.” – @cspenn

• Geolocation is about to get crazy: It really is. Just like regular social networks that started out broad and then went into niche overkill, geolocation apps are headed in the same direction. In a hallway conversation with @mmpartee, I learned that the less popular Where app is incredibly profitable, while the wildly popular FourSquare app is…. not.The new difference in geolocation apps will be business models, and how they plan to sustain after VC funding. I actually think niche apps have a greater possibility of achieving this. The IAmHungry app is monetized by restaurants, while the funny yet convenient Sit or Squatapp—which will find you a public bathroom in a flash—simply takes ads.

“Planning for failure is one of the most underrated activities” – @tamadear

• Just do it: People get so caught up in the planning of a podcast, web show or new start-up project that it seems like most just get burnt out in the planning process. Maybe this weeds out the doers from the talkers, but if there was one big theme here it was to JUST DO IT. Don’t stop thinking, just don’t let it get in the way of actually doing what you want to do.

Podcamp Boston Tools & Tricks

A good amount of helpful social and new media tools were recommended at PodCamp. I’m sure it’d be impossible to catch all of them, but here were some pretty notable ones:

• Prettylink WP Plugin lets you create your own URL shortener from your domain name. It sends Google juice to your site instead of an external URL shortener. The premium version enables you to shrink, cloak, track, organize, share and test all of your links on your own domain and server.

• Knowem.com & Namechk.com will both let you see if your username or vanity URL is available across 150+ sites.

• FreeKindleBooks.org has a bunch of books that you can download for free to your Kindle while InkMesh will help you comparison shop for prices on eBooks.

• PolicyTool.net is a free company policy generating tool which can also help you create create social media policies.

• MyMediaInfo.com and BuzzStream.com were both recommended as low-cost ways to access media and monitor social media.

• Wiki.KenBurbary.com was added as a larger database to find difference social media monitoring solutions.

• Twiangulate.com can be used to find common Tweeps amongst the people you follow and those that they follow. Great tool for competitive research.

• Twubs.com can be used to register a hashtag, organize it and list it in the Twubs directory.

• Paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag and shared via Twitter automatically.

Feel free to add any additional ones in the comments!

And by the way, huge awesome round of applause for the hand-working team that made Podcamp happen: @chelpixie @ellenrossano @CarissaO @shersteve @DougH @cspenn and @chrisbrogan.

See you next time!

Or, in other words, we’re coming together as a superhuman marketing team to manifest some pretty exceptional all-inclusive packages for our existing and new clients. The projects we have coming up are pretty exciting.

This weekend, Amanda MacArthur, our CFO (Chief Marketing Farmer) and Patrick Hughes, our CPF (Chief Production Farmer) will be mingling with their social media friends at PodCamp Boston 5 and decided to do something a little different for our business cards.

Call us old fashioned, but stamps and Indian Ink make for great business cards. And they smell good too.

Ok we cheated on the stamps with a Uniball pen for our contact information, but they just don’t make stamps that small!

And besides, here on the farm, we’re the ones we deliver, nobody delivers to us. So if Vistaprint thought they were going to offer us some tomfoolery of 500 free business cards (+S&H), they had another thing coming.

Well, if you’re going to be at Podcamp, we’ll see you there! If not, you’re missing out on some pretty sweet business cards.

At BuzzFarmers, we’re a little different. We know about the Internet. Even more importantly, we know about that Google guy and how he’s some crazy fast super-reader and good at answering questions when people type words into his search barrel.

But how does one go about getting Mr. Google to read your words? Simple. The Internet is awesome, and we’ve come up with a list of the best search engine submission tools you’ll ever find. Right here. Right now.

Grow your own grass

Don’t believe in landscapers on your farm? We can respect that. That’s why it’s sometimes even the best search engine tools don’t give you that hands-on control that we so desire. Here are links to submit your site to search engines through the search engines themselves.

Google search engine submission – Google is going to index your site at some point, but using this tool let’s them know you’re there and that they should index your site quickly.

Bing search engine submission -Your site hasn’t show up in Bing just yet? Just clicky clicky right here and Bing will start indexing you just as soon as their tractors can get there.

Yahoo! is now powered by Bing, so there’s no need to submit anything there.

Hire a landscaper

Not into all the quick-form technical mumbo jumbo? That’s fine, there are a few services you can use that will submit your site where ever you want, and these are the best search engine submission tools that we’ve found:

FastSubmit – This site will submit your site everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. It says it will submit it “to over 100+ of the Internet’s biggest search engines and directories”, except they’re missing Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Submit Express – The most highly ranked search engine submission tool is Submit Express. They have a paid service that starts at $29.95, but they also have a free search engine submission tool too. It submits to all major search engines including to major search engines, including Yahoo, Google, Bing (formerly MSN) and DMOZ.

Add.me – This free service takes about one minute to complete and will submit your site to Google, Scrub the Web, Bigfinder, Fyber Search, ExactSeek, InfoTiger, FocusLook, WalHello, Jayde, EntireEeb, Mixcat, SearchSight, WhatuSeek, e-SiteSecrets, Tower Search, Burf, Feedplex, Active Search Results, Anoox and GhetoSearch.

The truth about the best search engine submission tools

The truth about all of this is that search engines are going to find your content at some point whether you submit to them or not. By submitting your site to search engines, it’s not going to boost your ranking, it’s only going to tell them that you are there, right now.

A better way to go about this is to use social media to promote your site. Google likes social networks like Twitter, and as soon as it sees you on Twitter, it indexes whatever you’ve linked to. You will get indexed 10x faster by using social media than by doing nothing, and still a whole lot faster than by manually submitting yourself to search engines.

If you want to be more proactive about submitting your articles, there is a popular tool called Pingomatic, which will tell search engines every time you post a new blog. Like I said, social media will do the same thing for you (and create more inbound links), but Pingomatic helps you by adding new posts to all of the many blog directories out there too.