By Leo Valiquette
A couple of weeks back, I expressed my firm belief about the portability of strong writing skills between disciplines, with particular reference to journalists who make the career transition into public relations or marketing. Here’s my promised followup on the importance of not forgetting your roots in the newsroom when it comes to writing copy and placing a story.
(DISCLAIMER: Everything I am about to say stems from the assumption that you are great at what you do. And, frankly, most writers are not, but that’s a subject for another time.)
Strong writing remains at the core of effective public relations and marketing activities and this has become even more apparent with the rise of content marketing. From the ubiquitous and often maligned media release, to blog posts ghost-written for CEOs and thought leadership articles placed with leading trade and industry press, the lessons learned as a journalist remain relevant. In addition to my points below, you might also want to read Alex’s post from a couple of months back, 5 tips content marketers should take from journalists.
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By Alexandra Reid
It is commonplace to see businesses participating on social media, but many are failing to achieve the delicate balance between self-promotion and providing value.
Worse, businesses are misunderstanding what promotion on social media entails. They’re shouting at their audiences while failing to provide any reason for them to listen.
Imagine walking into a cocktail party and, without listening for even a moment to the various conversations taking place, shouting at the top of your lungs about your latest company promotion to no one in particular. If it’s an exceptionally valuable deal like, “We’re giving away free Macbook Pros tomorrow at noon,” you might get some attention because the guests will quickly recognize how it benefits them. However, your less-than-charming approach will not leave the most positive and lasting impression about yourself or your company.
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By Jeff Campbell
This is a familiar phrase to all those who have used the tube to get around London. It may also be familiar to those who continue to try to reconcile the information we often use to measure marketing effectiveness with sales forecast. In other words, trying to answer the question, “How will my marketing spend translate into revenue?”
Along the continuum from awareness to closed sale, marketers and sales leaders use many measurements to manage the processes and understand the effectiveness of various investments. The thing is, marketing uses metrics like impressions, click-through rate and conversions (among many others) to understand the effectiveness of campaigns while in sales, measurements are typically activity-based or state-based. Some examples include: number of leads, number of calls, number of opportunities by stage, and so on. All of the sales measurements are provided through the sales people themselves while the marketing measurements are taken directly from prospects’ actions.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are MarketingSherpa, Fast Company, MarketingProfs, SocialTimes, and Jeremiah Owyang.
Content marketing: 3 tips from the trenches
Short and sweet, MarketingSherpa provides three content marketing gems in this post.
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By Alexandra Reid
Following the release of her latest book, Marketing in the Round, I sat down with award-winning marketer Gini Dietrich to discuss the new push for businesses to break down organizational silos and adopt a “round” approach to marketing operations. In this podcast, Gini explains what’s going on in the marketing world today that convinced her it was a good idea to write this book, steps to develop a “round” marketing process, and shares specific applications for this approach for all kinds of businesses.
Our conversation was recorded over Skype and, due to sound quality issues, had to be edited significantly. The meat and potatoes are solid, though, and so I encourage you to have a listen.
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By Leo Valiquette
