Startup marketing guide

Need to start putting that entrepreneurial marketing plan together? Although the “PR” section is not as relevant as it used to be, this is an excellent startup marketing checklist. Here we go:

The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing

Starting a business is exhilarating. Unfortunately, the “build it and they will come” theory doesn’t hold much weight and those overnight success stories you hear about are often the result of behind the scenes years of hard work. Simply put, startup marketing is a unique challenge often times because of the limited resources, whether it’s time, money or talent.

You have to be sure every effort, no matter how small, is well-planned and flawlessly executed. And to make it even more difficult, the traditional marketing strategies don’t always work.

Startup marketing is a whole different science. How so? The secret is properly combining the right channels: Content Marketing and PR.

So, starting from the beginning, here’s the complete Startup Marketing Manual.

Foundation

The Startup Foundation

Before you start laying bricks, you need a solid foundation. A successful startup marketing strategy follows that same principle. Before you jump into marketing your startup, make sure you have the following bases covered.

1. Choosing a Market

It’s easy for startup founders to believe the whole world will love their products. After all, founders eat, sleep and breathe their products. The reality is that only a small portion of the population is interested in your product.

If you try to market your startup to everyone, you waste both time and money. The key is to identify a niche target market and go after market share aggressively.

How do you choose a market? There are four main factors to consider:

Market Size – Are you targeting a regional demographic? Male? Children? Know exactly how many potential customers are in your target market.
Market Wealth – Does this market have the money to spend on your product?
Market Competition – Is the market saturated? As in, are their many competitors?
Value Proposition – Is your value proposition unique enough to cut thru the noise?

2. Defining Keywords

With a clearly defined market, you can begin building a keyword list. You’ll use the keyword list primarily for blogging, social media and your main marketing site. Essentially, you want to build a list of words or phrases that are highly relevant to your brand. Ask yourself this: What would someone type into Google to find your startup’s website?

Start with a core keyword list. This is a list of three to five keywords that completely summarize what your startup does. For example, Onboardly’s core keyword list is: customer acquisition, content marketing and startup PR. Your core keyword list should be based on your value proposition. What is it that you’re offering customers?

Tip: Your core keywords make excellent blog categories.

Now you’ll want to expand your core keyword list to include secondary keywords. Secondary keywords are more specific. Take “content marketing”, the core keyword from earlier, for example. Secondary keywords might include: corporate blogging, blogging best practices, email marketing how to, etc.

Use free tools to find the keywords already sending traffic to your website. Then run your core keywords through Google’s Keyword Tool and Uber Suggest. The best keywords found through those tools will be identified by low competition and high traffic. In other words, a lot of people are searching for them, but few results are displayed.

3. Defining Success

Success is different for every startup. Maybe success is 500 new signups per month for Startup A while Startup B thinks success is $50,000 in revenue per month. Whatever your idea of success may be, define it early and define it rigidly.Write it down or send it to the entire team. Just make sure everyone you’re working with knows your definition of success and is prepared to work towards it.

Be sure to stay consistent. It doesn’t matter if you’re defining success by signups, revenue, profit or anything else you can think of. What does matter is that it’s tied to real growth (no vanity successes) and that it’s measured the same way each month. For example, don’t define success as 500 new signups one month and then $50,000 in revenue the next. Pick one definition and commit to it.

4. Setting Core Metrics

Just as you shouldn’t indulge vanity success, you shouldn’t indulge vanity metrics.Eric Ries refers to working with vanity metrics as “playing in success theatre”. While vanity metrics are appealing, if only to your ego, they are useless. They are not tied to real growth, meaning you won’t know if your startup is a roaring success or total flop until it’s far too late.

Be sure your core metrics are accurately measurable and specific. For example, let’s assume you’ve defined success as 500 new signups per month. You might measure the conversion rate of three calls to sign up. The idea is to have a few highly valuable metrics based on actions taken throughout the customer acquisition funnel (e.g. signups, newsletter subscriptions, eBook downloads). Don’t try to measure everything. Focus on the key indicators of success.

Tip: Record baseline metrics right away so you can easily determine your growth.

5. Estimating a Conversion Rate

The next step is to assign conversion rates and values. Consider newsletter signups, for example. 100 new newsletter signups per month could be incredible growth if your conversion rate is 20%. That is, if 20% of your newsletter subscribers become paying customers. If your conversion rate is closer to 1%, those 100 newsletter signups might be insignificant.

Estimate (based on historical data) your lead conversion rate. Now do the same to estimate the lifetime value of a customer. If you know how many of your leads convert and how much those conversions generate for your startup, you can assign values to goal completions like newsletter signups. $2,500 per month from your newsletter is a lot more indicative of success than 100 new newsletter signups.

6. Setting a Budget

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the money. How much can you afford to spend on your startup marketing strategy? Remember that while inbound marketing leads cost 61% less than outbound marketing leads, they are not free. Set a budget early in the game and accept that limitation.

“57% of startup marketing managers are not basing their marketing budgets on any ROI analysis.”

More importantly, carefully plan how you intend to divide that budget. Maybe your blog has been your most powerful tool to date and you want to invest 40% of the budget on it. Or maybe you want to spend 35% of the budget to develop a new eBook or online course. Just be sure you have the logistics settled before you start spending (or you might just lose your hat).

Social Media

Social media is one of the most popular ways to promote your content and reach influencers. Since a great content promotion plan brings potential customers to your website and influencing the influencer can generate thousands of new leads, social media is invaluable to startups. Of course, there are a few tricks to get the most out of it.

1. Choosing the Right Social Media Networks

Startups tend to choose the social media networks they engage on without much strategy. The two most common mistakes are trying to master every network and trying to master certain networks just because the competition is doing it. If all of your competitors are on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you should be too, right? Maybe, but maybe not.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit, Pinterest and now Instagram, are some of the most popular social networks today. All of them can be great content promotion and community building tools, but they all have unique characteristics. Facebook, for example, is typically powered by your existing customers who enjoy visual posts like pictures and video. Twitter, on the other hand, is often powered by potential customers who respond well to links (e.g. blog links).

Each social network ‘works’ differently, as in, how the community takes, interprets and digests your sharing and content varies. Reddit is often referred to as a very guarded network and detests spammers. Unlike twitter, here you can’t just schedule various messages every day. The content you share in Reddit has to be specific and unique to the categories you choose. Reddit, like other networks, requires a slower approach. You can’t just jump on, run some ads and expect people to upvote all your content. Be mindful of the network and community you are trying to reach, it may not be in the social space you first thought.

Tip: Consider the demographic of the social network itself. Take Tumblr, for example. Tumblr caters to a young, laid-back audience that loves sharing inspiring quotes and funny pictures. If you’re targeting this audience, don’t spend your time on LinkedIn.

2. Defining the Best Times to Post

The idea that there is a perfect time to post a tweet or Facebook update is a myth. If you’re targeting teenagers, mornings and nights might be the best times to post during the school year. During the summer? That’s a whole other story. There simply is no universal “perfect time to post”. There are, however, some best practices (according to Dan Zarella). All times are EST.

Facebook:

Saturdays are best.
12 p.m. is the best time to share.
0.5 posts per day is the best frequency.

Twitter:

5 p.m. is the best time to get a retweet.
1 to 4 link tweets per hour is the best frequency.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays are best.
6 a.m., 12 p.m. and 6 p.m. are the best times to tweet in terms of clicks.

3. Using a Keyword List

Now it’s time to put that keyword list you created earlier to good use. When it comes to social media, you’ll use your keyword list to maximize your engagement efforts. If you’re marketing an online shopping club for families like MarilynJean, you’ll want to ensure you’re having family and shopping focused discussions on social media.

The easiest way to do this is to use a social networking management tool likeHootSuite. That way you can setup search streams of your core keywords. Using MarilynJean as an example, one of their streams might be for the keyword “online shopping club”. They’ll be able to monitor all of the conversations happening around that keyword and join in. More importantly, MarilynJean will solidify a reputation in the space.

Tip: Use your keyword list to help target any online ads you may be running.

4. Creating and Using an Influencer List

As mentioned above, one of the best marketing techniques online is to influence the influencer. It will take a long time for your startup to develop a highly influential relationship with thousands of people. Instead, focus on connecting with the people who already have that influence.

“78% of social media users said posts by brands influenced their purchasebehavior moderately or highly.”

For example, MarilynJean might look to connect with a famous celebrity mother via Twitter. If that mom loves what they’re doing for families and tweets about them to thousands (if not millions) of loyal followers, MarilynJean will see a huge surge in both followers and traffic.

Tip: Journalists and community leaders are great influencers as well. Don’t limit yourself to celebrities, who can be very tricky to connect with.

Build your influencer list with a bit of market research. Start by finding popular blogs in the space. Who writes for those blogs? Who owns them? Search for your core keywords on Twitter. Who appears in the results? Who are they following?

Remember that a high follower count is not always a good indication of influence. Look for how engaged their followers are and their follower to following ratio.

5. Setting Up a Blog

Setting up a blog can be quite simple. It’s a matter of downloading the software, uploading it to your server and following the setup instructions. WordPress, for example, is free and offers many amazing plugins. One for example, is Yoast SEO. Start by installing Yoast, a SEO plugin that will help Google and other search engines locate and rank your content. (Other great plugins include Akismet, Calendar, and featured posts) Then, setup the basics like blog categories and tags.

Once the back-end of your blog is ready to go, think about the curb appeal. How does your design look? Ask a professional designer to help you design your blog or give it a small revamp. Then invite ten friends to check out the design and offer feedback. You’ll get a feel for the aesthetic appeal. Remember, design is important as it relates to user experience, but it shouldn’t be all consuming. Your blog is about publishing really great content, at the right time to the right people. Your design should simply enhance that experience.

Be sure your design is also functional. Ask yourself these questions:

If I stand back and squint my eyes, does my call to action still pop?

Do I have:

Search functionality?
Social media information and sharing functions (e.g. Twitter feed, Facebook plugin)?
A blog subscription and RSS feed option?
Featured images on my blog’s homepage?
Social sharing buttons on each blog post?

Note: While WordPress is not the only blogging platform, it is one of the most widely used.

Startup PR

startup PR

PR remains a mystery in many startup circles.

When’s the right time to tell people about your startup? Is there value in getting early coverage on industry blogs? What message is going to resonate with writers? How can you maximize the press coverage you do get and translate it into sales? Should I hire a PR firm to help me out?

The good news is it doesn’t need to be such a mystery. Fundamentally, it all boils down to this:

What to say.
When to say it.
Who to say it to.

1. Craft Meaningful Positioning Statements

Much like a great elevator pitch should lie in the mind of any entrepreneur, a series of engaging positioning statements is vital. And while constructing two sentences may seem easy, crafting effective statements is quite the challenge.

Start by identifying what the product is and how it will affect others. Think of the product as the solution created to solve a worldwide problem. This is an important measure to remember when marketing and selling the product. Don’t think of it as selling a product. Think of it as solving a problem. Lastly, who will care about your product?

What is your product?
How will it affect others?
Who will care?

Positioning statements combine these three key factors into two sentences that are used to market the product and pitch it to the media. To ensure success, it is important that these statements not only articulate what the product is capable of, but that they clearly describe its value proposition as well.

2. Define Your Startup Sensitivities

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” – Sun-tzu

By identifying competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, one can better understand how to market one’s product as better. Why is their solution to the universal problem their product solves better than those before it?

Be creative. Use spreadsheets, visual imagery or lists. Harness all of the information available on the product and its competitors, and study it. Look at each closely and determine strengths and weaknesses. If there are others who have an edge, then look at an angle where they are lacking.

Creating “the next social network for penguins” might be your ultimate passion, but be conscious of the fact that you’ve got a remarkably short span of time to engage writers when pitching them. Focus on the one (or two) strongest aspects of your value proposition (what your customers love about you most) and lean heavily on those hooks to gauge media interest.

3. Identifying the Right Writers for a Media List

The importance of identifying who will care about the product is not only relevant in terms of crafting positioning statements, but in identifying the right writers for a media list as well. Any media outlet employs a number of qualified writers capable of telling the story, but you should be careful to pitch only writers who will be the best fit for your product. Though time-consuming, this simple step should never be overlooked.

Determine key media outlets of interest then search for stories with similar themes or relevance to your own. Look at the writers who’ve covered those stories.

Always pitch the right writer for your story. For example, if your product is exclusively for iPhone, don’t pitch a journalist who only reports on Android products.

“Build your network before you need them.” ~ Jeremiah Owyang, Partner and Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group

Once you have identified the writers to connect with, utilize social media to engage with them. Build relationships and ask of nothing. Set up private Twitter lists of the writers of interest, and actively respond to them and retweet their posts. Make friends with them!

Relationships with writers are not always easy to build, but the effort to achieve them can mean great story coverage and the opportunity to be covered again in the future. Even if you are not in a position to leverage journalists or writers, you should still be connecting and making those relationships. In due time, they will always benefit you and your startup.

4. Creating a Press Kit

The key to a successful media launch is rooted deep within a killer media kit. Begin by identifying the items needed:

Media Advisory
Logos & Screenshots
Founder Bios & Photos

A media advisory should include all major points that are important to the product, the company and its success. It should include how the product is changing the world and why it is important. More importantly, it should be written and directed towards who will care. The “pitch” should be included in the headline and/or the first paragraph of the release. This is an excellent opportunity to use your positioning statements from earlier.

Include brief and necessary background information on the company and its founders. Enough to offer a taste of the team behind the product. By offering quick stats at the end of the media advisory, writers are given a brief snapshot of the company. Include:

Company Name
Website
Twitter Handle(s)
CEO & Co-Founders
Launch Date (if applicable)
Fees (if applicable)

Be conscious of time restrictions or sensitivities. Is there an embargo present or a set launch date and time?

Remember, most writers will merely skim a media advisory. By ensuring that a media advisory is tight and effective, you’ll increase the chances of story coverage.

Always offer the media options to use as supplementary visuals to accompany the story. Include company logo(s) and relevant screenshots of the product. Anything that offers a glimpse of features and capabilities is appreciated.

Provide a brief biography of each founder and respective photos. What is the driving force behind the company and how have their beliefs shaped it to become the success it is now? Include any tidbits of information that writers could use.

An important takeaway is that your press kit can be your ultimate weapon in securing great coverage. We recommend using a personalized Dropbox folder orGoogle Drive for each journalist you approach so that you can easily share by inviting them to the folder. It’ll also confirm when they join or view the folder – confirming interest – and hopefully that a story is about to be written.

5. Reaching Out to Journalists

Engagement with journalists prior to reaching out is key. When interacting with writers beforehand, you should request to send information on a story that may interest them. As previously mentioned, by building a relationship first, this request doesn’t come off as insincere. Writers may still decline, but by continuing to build on the relationship created, you could potentially convince them to accept in the future.

Content Creation

content creation

With a blog setup and your PR in full swing, it’s time to kick content creation into high-gear. Managing a blog and other forms of content can seem daunting, especially to not-so-great writers. Fortunately, four little steps will give startups the information they need to get serious.

1. Creating a Topic List

You’ve got a good looking blog designed and a great content promotion strategy, but something’s missing. Oh right! The content.

Before you dive right in and start writing, create a topic list. The perfect topic list is based on your core keywords for SEO purposes. Using your core keywords on your blog builds your startup’s credibility with search engines. Start by brainstorming ten topic ideas around each of your core keywords. Where possible, use your keywords in the titles, but not where it feels unnatural.

With between thirty and fifty topics, you can start thinking about writing. But first, put all of these ideas into a calendar. When will each be published? Who will write them? Are any of them in progress? A blog calendar helps you track your topics from conception to completion. Gantt charts are often shrugged off, but for the purpose of properly managing an editorial schedule, they are extremely helpful. Check out the multitude of templates and spreadsheets available for free online like: 90-day calendar, a Google Doc template, or these free guides from Bob Angus.

Tip: Be sure to add descriptions to your topic ideas. You might not remember your main points when you go to write the post three months from now.

[ALSO READ: OUTSTANDING FREE TOOLS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT]

2. Knowing What Types of Content to Publish

There are four main types of content to be published (excluding blog content). Like social networks, each one has unique advantages and disadvantages. Consider your options carefully, always keeping your target market in mind. And remember:don’t try to do a little bit of everything right away.

eBook/Guides: Information products are huge. Offer a free eBook in exchange for a name and email address. Just like that, you have a new lead. You know they’re interested in your product because they were interested in the eBook and now you have their contact information. Now, follow up. Ask their opinion of the eBook and open the door for conversation.

“Information products have the best margins. If you can get them into a subscription, then you’ll have monthly reoccurring revenue.” ~ Dan Martell, Founder of Clarity

Webinar: Hearing your voice and engaging with you live gives your customers (and potential customers) a sense of ease. Webinars capitalize on this! Cross promote your webinar on your blog. Also, have someone on your team live tweet during the webinar using a custom #hashtag. At the end of the webinar, after providing real value to the attendees, post your contact information. It’s a simple, interactive way to generate new leads.
Newsletter: Email marketing is far from dead, despite what you might have read. Make subscribing to your newsletter quick and easy. Don’t go overboard with your email blasts though because if you overuse the connection, you’ll lose it. For the same reason, you’ll want to ensure every newsletter offers real value and is not just an excuse to push a new product. Try offering a discount, a promotion, industry news, or a contest – whatever!
Video: If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how much a video is worth. Keep it simple by having an explainer video created or by shooting an introduction video. Put the video on your startup’s homepage and/or blog. You might be camera shy, but statistics show that most people would rather watch than read.

3. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is vital for startups. First of all, guest posting on a popular blog is a great way to build your reputation in the space. Second, having someone influential guest blog on your startup’s blog is an easy way to drive traffic.

Start by looking for outgoing guest blogging opportunities on the top blogs that are writing for your target market. Most blogs will accept guest posts openly, so look for a writers’ page or contributors’ page. If you’re having trouble, track down the blog owner or editor on social media. Ask to email him a first draft of your blog post idea. Just make sure it’s high-quality and 100% original.

Once you’ve built a reputation, it will be easier to find influencers willing to contribute to your startup’s blog. Create a writers’ page of your own or reach out to select influencers individually via social media or email. When the guest post is published, be sure to ping the contributor so she can promote the post to her whole network.

4. Capturing Emails

Email subscription has been mentioned a few times already. Capturing emails can be divided into three categories: email submits, newsletter subscriptions and blog subscriptions. Email submits could come from eBook downloads or similar offers. Newsletter subscriptions are just that: people interested in reading regular updates and content from your startup. Blog subscriptions are straightforward as well.

Email submits and newsletter subscriptions are best managed by tools likeMailChimp, which allows you to easily send well-designed custom emails to leads. Blog subscriptions, on the other hand, are best managed by tools like Feedburner, which allows you to automatically notify leads when you published new blog content.

Test and Iterate

test and iterate

By now, your marketing strategy is in full motion. Of course, no one gets it perfect on the first try and there’s always room for improvement. That’s where testing and iteration comes into play. Remember back to the core metrics and definition of success from earlier. Keep those two things in mind here.

1. Setting Up Analytics Tools

The key to measuring success is a great analytics tool. If you need a no-frills solution, check out Google Analytics. It’ll give you the basics and, over time, you will learn to master the somewhat complicated behind-the-scenes mechanics of it. If you want something more user-friendly and advanced, tools like KISSmetrics are always available.

Your experience setting up your analytics tool will be different depending on the solution you choose. However, all analytics tools will have you insert a snippet of code on your webpages, which allows them to track visits and events. Be sure to look for analytics tools that are committed to preserving fast load times, likeMeasurely. Some codes leave visitors waiting for the website to load, which can increase bounce rate dramatically.

2. Measuring Against Benchmarks

Earlier, you recorded your baseline metrics, which you’ll use as benchmarks going forward. Ideally, you’re measuring week over week and month over month growth. If you make the mistake of waiting for solely month over month data, you could be too late. Each week, compare your core metrics to the week before. Some give and take is normal. Each month, do the same. Here, you should look for consistent growth.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” ~Peter Drucker, Management Consultant

When you see significant growth or decline, be sure to attribute it to some event(s). For example, a tweet that went viral or a newsletter that was a huge disaster. Isolate what you did differently and either replicate it or avoid it going forward. Don’t just measure your data – act on it!

3. Brainstorming Creative New Ideas

While tweaking what you’re already doing is great, coming up with brand new ideas is even better. It’s not enough to only iterate and optimize what you’ve been doing. The most successful startups are always trying creative new things. Maybe a social contest, a funny video, a new online course, a clever PR angle – the list is endless.

Many of your new and innovative ideas can easily fail, but the few that succeed will be well worth it. Never get complacent! As a startup, the name of the game is agility, flexibility and thinking forward.

Best Practices

best practices

What are the industry experts saying? What are the top startups doing? Here are three startup marketing best practices.

1. Sell the Solution

Too many startups focus on the problem instead of the solution. It makes sense, of course. Founders design a solution for the problem, which makes the problem a founder’s first love. Unfortunately, it’s the solution that appeals to potential customers. Realistically, there are hundreds of products that could solve the problem of, for example, low productivity. What makes your solution the perfect choice?

2. Have a Compelling Story

Storytelling is a powerful sales tool. Just ask Seth Godin! If you have a compelling story, use it. How did you come up with your solution? Did you struggle in the beginning? Are you still struggling? Use your story to differentiate yourself from the competition. Startup marketing is all about the customer and establishing an authentic relationship. Having a relatable story to tell is a fast-track.

3. Use All Your Resources

Your team is arguably one of your biggest marketing tools. Their passion for what your startup is doing is called evangelism. Use it to your advantage. Send them out into the world excited to tell your startup’s story to anyone they meet. But don’t stop there. Ride the buzz from a trending topic by writing a blog post on it or creating a video about it. Run a contest around a major holiday to drum up some hype. Be sure you’re not overlooking any marketing resources, big or small.

Conclusion

Startup marketing is a complex science. Some great ideas have failed due to a lack of media attention and customer awareness. Others have gone under thanks to a poor strategy. Still, other great ideas have spiraled to billion dollar fame! Well, founders everywhere can stop searching for that elusive secret to startup marketing success. It’s simply the sweet spot between content marketing and PR.

About the Author: Renée Warren is the Co-Founder of Onboardly, a company focused on helping funded technology startups be more visible and acquire more customers. They do this through Content Marketing, startup PR and Social Media. Subscribe to their blog here!

Original POST

ht kissmetrics

August 18, 2015December 23, 2017

Why no one pays attention to your marketing

Moz is one of those companies that really understands that sharing great information and helping others to understand (“Youtility” as Jay Baer calls it) the intricacies of digital marketing puts them on the map as accessible professionals. Rand Fishkin often contributes to a feature called “Whiteboard Fridays” which are always worth a watch/read. Below is just one of a number of really terrific posts.

Ever mass-deleted a bunch of impersonal emails from your inbox? Brand fatigue is a real threat to your marketing strategy. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses why brands become “background noise” and how you can avoid it.

For reference, here’s a still of this week’s whiteboard. Click on it to open a high resolution image in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat a little bit about why no one is paying attention to your brand, to your marketing. It’s the perilous pitfall of brand fatigue.

Brand fatigue sucks

So you have all had this happen to you. I promise you have. It’s happened in your email. It’s happened in your social streams. It’s happened through advertising in the real world, online and offline.

I’ll give you an illustration. So I sign up for this newsletter. I decide, “Hey, I want to get some houseplants. My house has no greenery in it.” So I sign up for Green Dude Houseplants’ newsletter. What do I get? Well, I get a, “Welcome to Our Newsletter.” Oh, okay.

And then maybe the next day I get, “Meet Our New Hires.” Meet our new hires? I’m sure that your new hires are very important to you and your team, but I just got introduced to your brand. I’m not sure I care that much. To me, you’re all new hires. You might as well be, right? I don’t know you or the team yet.

“Best Summer Ever Event,” okay, maybe, maybe an event. “Edible Backyard Gardens, you know, I don’t have a backyard. I was signing up for a houseplant newsletter because it was in my house. “See Us at the Garden Show,” I don’t want to go to the garden show. I was going to buy from you. That’s why I’m online.

Okay, thanks.

How to cause brand fatigue

It’s not just the value of the messaging. It’s the frequency that it happens at. You’ve seen this. I’m on an email list that I signed up for, I think it’s called FounderDating. It’s here in Seattle. I think it’s in San Francisco. I thought it was a really cool idea when I signed up for it. Then I have just been inundated with messages from them. I think some of them are actually worthy of my participation, like I should have gone to the forum. I should have replied. I should have checked out what this particular person wanted. But I get so much email from them that I’ve just begun to hit Delete as soon as I get it.

We’ve actually had this problem at Moz too. If you’re a Moz subscriber, you probably get a new email every time a new crawl is completed, and a campaign is set up, and you have new rankings data. Some of that’s really important, right? Like if you’re paying attention to this particular site’s rankings and you want to see every time you get an update, well yeah, you need that email. But it’s actually kind of tough to opt in to which ones you want and with what frequency and control it all from one place.

We have found that our email open rates, engagement rates have actually drifted way, way down over time because, probably, we’ve inundated you with so much email. This is a big mistake that Moz has made in our email marketing, but a lot of brands make it in tons of places. So I want to help you avoid that.

1) Too many messages on a medium

Brand fatigue happens when there are too many messages, just too many raw messages on a medium. You start to see the same brand, the same name, the same person again and again. Their logo, their colors, the association you have, it just becomes background noise. Your brain goes into this mode where it just filters it out because it can’t handle the volume of stuff that’s coming through. It needs a filtration mechanism. So it starts to identify and associate your brand or your logo or your name or a person’s name with “filter.” Filter that out. That goes in the background.

2) Value provided is too low or infrequent to deserve attention

It also happens when the value provided is too low or too infrequent to deserve attention. So this might be what I’m talking about with FounderDating. One out of every maybe five or six messages, I’m like, “Oh yeah, that was interesting. I should pay attention to that.” But when it becomes too infrequent, that same filtration happens.

Too few of the high value messages means you’re not going to pay attention, you’re not going to engage with that brand, with that company anymore. All of us marketers will see that in the engagement rates. No matter the medium, we can look at our numbers and see that those are going down on a percentile basis, and that gets really frustrating.

3) The messaging can’t be effectively tuned or controlled by the user

So this is the problem that Moz is having where we don’t have that one email control center where you say how often you want exactly which messages updating you of which notifications about which campaigns, and newsletter and da, da, da. So your message frequency is either all the time high or very high and so you’re, “I don’t like any of those options.”

Very frustrating.

How NOT to cause brand fatigue

Now, I do have some solutions and suggestions. But it’s platform by platform.

Email

Start very conservative with your email marketing and highly personal. In fact, I would actually recommend personally sending all the messages out to your first few hundred users if you possibly can, because you will get a great rapport that you develop individually with person by person. That will give you a sense for what your audiences like and what kind of messaging they prefer, and they’ll know they can reply directly to you.

You’ll create that highly-engaged experience through email that will mean that, as you scale, you have the experience from the past to tell you how often you can and can’t email people, what they care about and don’t, what they filter and don’t, what they’re looking for from you, etc. You can thenwatch your open, unsubscribe and engagement rates through your email program. No matter what program you might be using, you can almost always see these.

Then you can watch for, “Oh, we had a spike.” That spike is a good thing. That means that people were highly engaged on this email. Let’s figure out what resonated there. Let’s go talk to folks. Let’s reach out to the people who engaged with it and just say, “Hey, why did you love this? What did you love about it? What can we do to give you more value like this?”

Or you watch for dips. Then you can say, “Oh man, the last three email newsletters that we’ve sent out, we’ve seen successive declines in engagement and open rates, and we’ve seen a rise in unsubscribe rates. We’re doing something wrong. What’s going on? What’s the root cause? Is it who we’re acquiring? Is it new people that signed up, or is it old-timers who are getting frustrated with the new stuff we’re sending out? Does this fit with our strategy? What can we fix?”

Be careful. The thing that sucks about brand fatigue is a lot of platforms, email included, have systems, algorithmic systems set up to penalize you for this. With email, if you get high unsubscribes and low engagement, that will actually kill your long-term chances for email marketing success, because Gmail and Yahoo Mail and Microsoft’s various mail programs and whatever installed mail your targets might have, whatever they’re using, you will no longer be able to break through those email filters.

The email filter that Gmail has says, “Hey, a lot of people click Unsubscribe and Report Spam. Let’s put this in the Promotions tab.” Or, “Hey, a lot of people are clicking Report Spam. You know what? Let’s just block this sender entirely.” Or, “Gosh, this person has in the past not engaged very much with these messages. We’re going to not make them high priority anymore.” Gmail has that automatic high priority system. So you’re getting algorithmically turned into noise even if you might have had something that your customers really cared about.

Blog or other content platform

This is a really interesting one. I would strongly urge you to read Trevor Klein from Moz’s blog postabout the experiment that we and HubSpot did around how much content to produce and whether lowering content or increasing content had positive effects. There are some fascinating results from that study.

But the valuable thing to me in that is if you don’t test, you’ll never know. You’ll never know the limits of what your audience wants, what will frustrate them, what will delight them. I recommend you don’t create content unless you can have a great answer for the question, “Who will help amplify this and why?” I don’t mean, like, “Oh, well I think people who really like houseplants will help amplify this.” That’s not a great answer.

A great answer is, “Oh, you know, I know this guy named Jerry. Jerry runs a Twitter account that’s all about gardening. Jerry loves our houseplants. He’s a big fan of this. He’s particularly interested in flowering cacti. I know if we publish this post, Jerry will help amplify it.” That’s a great answer. You have 10 Jerrys, great. Hit Publish. Go for it. You don’t? Why are you making it?

Watch your browse rate, your conversion rate, and conversion rate…. I don’t mean necessarily all the way to whatever you’re selling, your ecommerce store products or your subscription or whatever that is. Conversion rate could be conversion rate to an email newsletter or to following you on a social platform or whatever.

You can watch time on site and amplification per post to essentially get a sense for like, “Hey, as we’re producing content, are we seeing the metrics that would indicate that our content marketing is being successful?” If the answer to that is no, well we need to retool it. It turns out there’s actually no prize for hitting Publish.

You might think that your job as a content producer or a content marketer is to make content every day or content every week. That’s not your job. Your job is to have success with the metrics that are going to predict and correlate to the strategies you need as a business to acquire customers, to grow your marketing channels, to grow your brand’s impact, to help people, whatever it is that your mission is.

I highly recommend finding your audiences’ sweet spot for both focus and frequency. If you do those things, you’re going to do a great job with avoiding brand fatigue around your content.

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media

Last one is social. I’ll talk specifically about Twitter and Facebook, because most things can be classified in there, even things like Instagram and LinkedIn and the fading, sadly, Google+ and those sorts of things.

Twitter, generally speaking, more forgiving as a platform. Facebook has more of those algorithmic elements to punish you for low engagement.

So, for example, I’ve had this happen on my personal Facebook page where I’ve published a few things that people just didn’t really find interesting. This is on my Rand Fishkin Facebook page, different from the Moz one. It turns out that that meant that it was much harder for me next time, even with content that people were very engaged around, to reach them.

Facebook essentially had pushed in. They were like, “You know what? That’s three or four posts in a row from Rand Fishkin that people did not like, didn’t engage with. The next one we’re going to set the bar much higher for him to have to climb back up before we decide, ‘Hey, we’ll show that to more and more people.'”

Lately I’ve been having more success getting a higher percentage of my audience into the impression count of people who are actually seeing my posts on Facebook by getting better engagement there. But that’s a very challenging platform.

Users of both, however, are pretty sensitive, nearly equally sensitive. It’s not like Facebook users are more sensitive. It’s just that Facebook’s platform is more sensitive because Facebook doesn’t show you all the content you could possibly see.

Twitter is just a super simplistic newsfeed algorithm. It’s just, who posted last. So Twitter has that real time kind of thing. So I would still say for both of these, aim to only share stuff that gets high engagement, especially as your brand.

Personal account, do whatever you want, test whatever you want. But as your brand’s account, you want that high engagement over and over again because that will predict more people paying attention to you when you do post, going back and looking through your old social posts, subscribing to you, following you, all that sort of thing, considering you a leader.

You can watch both Twitter Analytics and your Facebook page’s stats to see if you’re having a dip or a spike, where you’re having success, where you’re not.

I actually love using Twitter and a little bit LinkedIn or Google+ to see what gets very high engagement and then I know, “Okay, I should re-share that on Twitter because my audience on Twitter is very temporal.” Two hours from now it’s going to be less than 1% overlap between who sees a Twitter post now and who sees a Twitter post 2 hours from now, and that’s a great test bed for Facebook as well.

So if I see something doing extremely well on Twitter or on Google+ or on LinkedIn, I go, “Aha, that’s the kind of thing I should post on Facebook. That will increase my engagement there. Now I can go post and get more engagement next time and build up my authority in Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm.

So with all of this stuff, hopefully, as you’re producing content, sharing content, building an email subscription, building a blog platform, you’re going to have a little less brand fatigue and a little more engagement from your users.

I look forward to chatting with you all in the comments. We’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Original POST

July 9, 2015

The Ultimate Resource Guide to Blogger Outreach and Guest Blogging

Shout out to kissmetrics for this handy dandy resource list. If you’ve been interested in expanding or starting your blogger outreach, here you go!

If you want to increase exposure for your business (beyond optimizing your website for search and growing your social media audience), then guest blogging and blogger outreach are avenues you may wish to explore. When you connect with bloggers in your industry, you are given platforms for communicating with your potential customers like never before.

The following are 35 resources to help your guest blogging and blogger outreach — including networks specifically created to help you connect with bloggers, guides for guest blogging and blogger outreach, and guest post opportunities for marketers.

Guest Blogging and Blogger Outreach Networks

The following networks will help your business connect with the right bloggers in your industry for guest blogging and blogger outreach.

MyBlogGuest – My Blog Guest is a free community that connects guest bloggers to blog owners. Join for free and start getting exposure from guest posting.
GuestBlogIt – Guest Blog It intends to be the ultimate guest blogging resource. Submit your content or find content for your blog for free. Gain high quality relevant back links.
BloggerLinkUp – Join the BloggerLinkUp list and you will get an email each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. These emails will list bloggers looking for expert sources, requests for guest posts, bloggers and web masters offering guest posts, and PR reps and others seeking reviews of products. When you see a request that you can fulfill, just respond directly to the requester.
BlogSynergy – BlogSynergy is essentially a social network for the blogging community. Bloggers use BlogSynergy to follow, connect and share guest blogging opportunities with one another.
Guest Blog Genius – Guest Blog Genius is an outsourced guest blogging service for SEOs and website owners looking to accumulate high quality links from authoritative blogs within their niche.
Guestr – Website owners can find guest posters; bloggers can find guest blogging opportunities and promote their blogs. Browse hundreds of sites.
GroupHigh – GroupHigh provides software that helps public relations, seo and social media professionals reach out to bloggers.
BlogDash – Find, engage and pitch to bloggers – all in one place. Filter through 109,847 bloggers by keywords, categories, Klout score, gender, location, and much more.
PostJoint – PostJoint is a smart new platform that connects advertisers and bloggers to make content marketing more productive and targeted than ever before. Advertisers produce quality content and bloggers offer to publish their guest posts. PostJoint matches up the audiences and takes care of quality control.
Copy for Bylines – The mission of Copy for Bylines is to bridge the gap between writers and online publishers and to work simultaneously with these creative individuals to produce better content online. They believe that because of the glut of worthless information available over the Internet, web content needs to be revolutionized — it should be quicker, personalized and beneficial to the online community.

Guest Blogging Guides

Need some motivation to get excited about guest blogging or some pointers on how to get started? Be sure to read the following guest blogging guides.

The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging – This article looks at exactly how you can get guest blogging opportunities and make the most out of them.
21 Reasons You Should Write Guest Posts – As Penguin and Panda (the latest Google updates) have shown us – times are changing in SEO. Fortunately, there is an easy way to bridge the gap between great people-pleasing content and the necessary elements of SEO: guest posts.
Why You Ought to Build an Online Brand Through Guest Blogging and Not Just Chase SEO Tricks – In general, content marketing is a great way to build your brand and guest posting is the content marketing tactic you want to use. Ask any online celebrity how they got the success that they have and they will likely tell you that they built up their brand by guest posting.
How to Write a Viral Guest Post for an A-List Blog – Want to write a guest post for an A-list blog? This article will teach you not only how to do that, but how to increase your chances of going viral.
How to Evaluate Guest Post Opportunities – As smart content marketers, we all need to make sure we’re standing out with our outreach and keeping a keen eye on our quality radars when we are out placing guest posts on the web.
The Ultimate Guide to Successful Guest Blogging – Though guest posts can be a great way to expand your blogging presence, it takes a pretty large chunk of time to do it, especially when you first start out. To help you make the most of awesome guest posting opportunities, this article sets out five steps you should follow.
How and Why You Should be Guest Blogging [With Case Study] – Guest blogging can grow your online efforts into something sought-after, authoritative, and even profitable. But what is it? And where do you begin? This article looks at the basics of guest blogging and considers some ways to get a mutually beneficial community started around what it is you already write.
17 Foolish Mistakes to Avoid as a Guest Blogger – Review 17 of the most common and egregious mistakes guest bloggers make when submitting contributor content to other blogs.
The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging – This article is intended to be a complete guide with the best and most practical information for guest blogging.
Putting Guest Post Outreach Theories to the Test [With Some Real World Data]– A business that systemizes a great deal and monitors a lot of processes puts some of its data to use to try to prove/disprove any commonly held theories about outreach, based on a sample of 400 guest posts they placed for clients over a three month period.

Blogger Outreach Guides

Blogger outreach – when done correctly – can bring a lot of great traffic and visibility to your brand. See the following guides on how to do blogger outreach the right way.

The Five Stages of Blogger Outreach: Attraction, Ambivalence, Commitment,Intimacy, and Proposal – A five-part series about building and sustaining relationships with bloggers and the outreach process, in general, based on the “five stages of dating.”
21 Better Ways to Do Blogger Outreach – There are better ways to do blogger outreach. In fact, there are 21 better ways.
Scale Outreach Using Pareto’s Law – This article tells how to identify influencers vs. lower level targets and scale outreach accordingly, focusing on strategies for the low and mid-level bloggers.
Outreach Specialist’s Bible – Whether you are doing blogger outreach, guest posting, or old fashioned public relations, you need to know where to start and how to pitch, as well as some tools to help you scale your efforts efficiently. The goal is to give you a source of information you can use to train your team to expand your connection creation efforts.
4 Pitches That Any Respectable Blogger Will Always Ignore – Are you not hearing back from the bloggers you pitch? You might be committing one of these common pitching errors.
Blogger Outreach: 9 Tips You Need to Succeed – If you haven’t used blogger outreach, it’s a great tool to add to your marketing toolbox. This article describes 3 reasons to use blogger outreach, 4 ways to use blogger outreach effectively, and 9 steps to develop a successful blogger outreach program.
Required Research for Better Blogger Outreach Pitches – Successful blogger outreach starts way before you send a pitch. Learn the 4 research stages that will help you provide a mutual benefit and place your content.
35+ Tips and Tools to Help You Find the RIGHT Contact Info – Improving your ability to find essential contacts in the blogger outreach process can give you a significant competitive advantage over others who are trying to get their content published.
9 Essential Tips for Warm Blogger Outreach Pitches – While there are many ways bloggers and brands are working together, there are a few best practices that have been set along the way to make those working relationships win-win. This post shows 9 ways to prepare pitches that will benefit both you and the blogger.
How To Contact Bloggers – Get the guide to blogger outreach free. Learn how you can drive real traction for your brand or product through blogger outreach.

Great Guest Blogging Opportunities for Marketers

Last but not least, if you’re in the online marketing niche, the following are some great guest blogging opportunities to check out.

KISSmetrics – If you’re interested in submitting a guest post for KISSmetrics, please read on and we’ll let you know what we are looking for and how the process works.
HubSpot – The award-winning HubSpot Inbound Marketing Blog has over 100,000 subscribers and attracts more than 800,000 monthly visits, so if you have exceptional blogging skills and would like to share your internet marketing expertise with a large audience of marketers and business owners, consider becoming a guest blogger.
ProBlogger – ProBlogger provides guidelines and suggestions to help you with your writing in order to increase the chances of the site being able to use your post and to help it get your post ready for publishing.
Copyblogger – Writing content for Copyblogger is hard. But it’s not hard like climbing Everest or launching eBay. Copyblogger lets you know what makes a great Copyblogger guest post.
202 Internet Marketing PR3 – PR8 Blogs That Accept Guest Posts – This is a list of 202+ high quality Internet marketing / social media / make money online / affiliate marketing / blogging tips / WordPress / SEO blogs with a Google Pagerank of 3 and above (at the time of the writing of the post) that are active and looking for high quality guest posts.

There you have it! Be sure to read the best practices for both guest blogging and blogger outreach, try out the various networks to connect with bloggers in your industry, and start measuring your success!

Original post is HERE.

May 19, 2015December 17, 2017

12 social media tips for business

Ah, social media. Still the wild west of marketing and populated with a mix of guns for hire and snake oil salesmen who, unfortunately, outnumber the authentic Gary Coopers out there. Sigh. I despise watching businesses that don’t have the time to understand what social can really do for their business get taken advantage of by folks promising more followers and reach.

So what?

How about grow revenue, inquiries, email lists, orders, bookings, downloads? It would seem a novel concept and an expectation to which many ~~snake oil~~ social media consultants don’t wish to be held accountable.

So next time you hear another “social media guru/jedi/ninja/sherpa/ expert,” etc. pitching you all about the awesome new followers, content and reach they can get you on the social platform du jour, step back and ask why that’s important to your business. The beauty of digital marketing is most everything can be tracked, and if your “hired gun” can’t provide analytics to show you what their efforts are specifically doing for your business, well…

The title on this post was modified from the original slightly clickbait-ish hed, 12 Social Media Truths No One Tells You – otherwise the content is the same and I agree with these “truths.” The following thoughts go hand in hand with a previous post, 7 things to quit doing with social marketing. Read on!

There’s no shortage of social media tips, how-tos, and advice for small businesses and entrepreneurs getting started and building a strategy. But if you’re like most business owners, you don’t have a lot of time. So here are 12 social media truths I hope can save you some time, avoid some common pitfalls, and focus your efforts on success.

1. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have.

People often fall into the trap of chasing follower numbers (or worse, paying for them). I’d rather have a network of 500 people in my industry who I can learn from and influence than 10,000 randomly-acquired bots and spammers and self-promoting chuckleheads. Build your networks by engaging like a real human being and helping people and you won’t have to worry about this.

2. You don’t have to be on every network.

I love Pinterest. These days I’m pinning ideas to spruce up our back patio. (It’s a thrill a minute ’round our place.) As a former social media snake oil salesman, I can make a convincing argument why any business can get value out of Pinterest or Instagram or Periscope or Glabberplat (I made one of those up). But if you have limited time, focus on providing value on the networks where your customers and prospects are most active. Better to not be somewhere than to have a presence there and ignore it.

3. You know your audience better than anyone. And if you don’t, ask.

You could pay a consultant to do an audience survey and explain the demographics of each social network and make recommendations about what networks you should use and what your customers want to see from you. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of smart consultants out there who can do that well. Or you could just spend the next couple of weeks asking your customers yourself.

4.Yes, your customers are on Facebook.

There’s, like, a billion people on Facebook. No, I mean literally. The number grows so rapidly that I check it every time I mention it. Your customers may not use Facebook daily to conduct business, but they’re definitely there, sharing pictures of their kids and finding out which Game of Thrones character they are and researching products and checking out local businesses. If you’re there too, and are interesting and helpful and human, they’ll appreciate that and remember you.

5. Social media isn’t free.

Have we thoroughly debunked this by now? Even if you only use free channels to engage and don’t pay to promote your posts, social media requires a time commitment, and like everything in life except making hamburger patties, the more time you put into it, the better it will be. Is your time free? Nope.

6. You don’t have to be a millennial.

Yes, “digital natives” have a lower learning curve when it comes to picking up apps and new social networks, but none of this is hard, no matter your age. Can you balance a checkbook? Can you do a Sudoku puzzle? I can’t, and I do social media for a living. Apps and networks won’t get traction if they’re hard to use, so the makers have an incentive to create a good user experience.

7. No, your cousin’s kid can’t do it for you.

Maybe Little Jimmy can build a wicked house in Minecraft, but does he know your business? Your customers? Does he have anything of value to add to a conversation about your industry? He can probably use a telephone, too (as long as it isn’t a pay phone, because how does that thing work and who even has change, gah!) but would you ask him to lead a call with your biggest client?

8. Yes, you do have time.

You’re busy. I’m busy. Everybody’s busy. Do you ever watch television? Then watch a little less and spend that time building your business. Need another example? I’m writing this post on my smartphone on the…train. (What did you think I was going to say?)

9. You can produce content. Yes. You can.

Have you ever sent an email to a business associate giving your take on the impact of some piece of industry news? Do you talk to your sales team about the potential ramifications of a piece of legislation, or a big move by a competitor or industry leader? That’s content. Just type it up next time. Your customers will find it valuable too. Don’t you want to be a thought leader? It’s so much better than being a guru. The hours are better and you don’t have to sit on the ground.

10. A blog post is whatever you say it is.

Some people think a blog post is a 2,000-word white paper. Some of the most useful posts I read are lists of links to important news in my industry. They might take 10 minutes to create, start to finish, but they can be very valuable. One paragraph that gets a customer thinking (and thinking about you) is a successful blog post.

11. Your customers really do care where you went on vacation.

Have you ever had a prickly email or telephone exchange with a new prospect or client, and then you met in person and found out your kids both play volleyball and are going to the same tournament in two weeks and then you were pals? That’s Facebook.

12. You can do it.

Building a social media strategy doesn’t have to be a big, hairy, difficult thing; in fact, it can and should be fun. Imagine having better, more human relationships with your prospects and customers, all the time. Social media can be the part of your marketing strategy you’ll actually enjoy. And if you’re having fun, your customers and prospects will have fun, too, and they’ll want to work with you. And that’s how you’ll know it’s working.

David B. Thomas is Senior Director of Content and Engagement at Salesforce.

Original post on VentureBeat